For decades, Brazil’s unreasonable acts, policies, and practices have harmed U.S. commerce, including by unfairly…

For decades, Brazil’s unreasonable acts, policies, and practices have harmed U.S. commerce, including by unfairly advantaging Brazil’s producers over their American competitors and by restricting access to one of the world’s top export markets. For example: Illegal Deforestation: Brazil’s deforestation practices make it more difficult for the U.S. logging industry to compete fairly in global markets. A staggering 91% of deforestation in the Amazon was illegal harvesting between 2023 and 2024. Illegally sourced timber products contribute to distorted global prices, resulting in the devaluation of U.S. wood products, with illegally sourced timber estimated to reduce legally sourced timber prices by 7% to 16%. There is also evidence that some sub-central levels of Brazil’s government are taking steps to eliminate or roll back tax and other public- and private-sector incentives designed to discourage deforestation. Read the below 🧵 for more non-reciprocal, pervasive trade practices.

Digital Trade: Brazilian courts have issued secret orders directing U.S. technology companies, including X, Meta, and Google, to remove certain political content, suspend accounts belonging to U.S. residents, and prohibit the platforms from disclosing these orders to profile owners. To enforce compliance, Brazilian courts have also subjected U.S. technology companies to daily non-compliance fines or required them to cease operations in Brazil.

Unfair, Preferential Tariffs: Brazil provides preferential treatment on over a thousand tariff lines for Mexico and hundreds of tariff lines for India at tariff rates between 10 and 100 percent lower than the rate that applies to U.S. exports in those same sectors.

Anti-Corruption Enforcement: Corruption in Brazil is not new, but with its recent actions, Brazil has moved farther away from global norms relating to fighting bribery and corruption. Last year, Brazil scored only 35 out of 100 on the Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). Given Brazilian companies’ involvement in some of the world’s largest corruption cases in the last decade, the OECD has expressed concerns about Brazil’s failure to achieve a sustainable level of foreign bribery enforcement consistent with its economic profile. oecd.org/en/publication…

Intellectual Property Protection: Since 2007, Brazil has been listed on the Watch List in USTR’s Special 301 Report, which identifies countries that deny adequate and effective intellectual property protections or fair and equitable market access to U.S. persons who rely on intellectual property. ustr.gov/about/policy-o…

Ethanol Market Access: Brazil has discontinued its previously balanced tariff treatment for U.S. ethanol and failed to reciprocate preferential U.S. tariffs on ethanol from Brazil. As a result, Brazil retains substantial access to the U.S. ethanol market, but imports of U.S. ethanol into Brazil have generally declined since Brazil reinstated its tariff on ethanol. In 2025, U.S. ethanol exports to Brazil totaled $96 million, an 87% decrease from the peak export value of $761 million in of 2018.

Electronic Payment Services: In November 2020, the Brazilian central bank established the instant payment system Pix, and the bank has acted as a regulator to disadvantage U.S. electronic payment services providers and preference its national champion Pix. The Brazilian central bank encourages use of Pix over other services by mandating that participating institutions offer Pix for free to individuals and by capping the fee those institutions may charge businesses for Pix transactions.