Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Wednesday that his country will respond with reciprocity to U.S. President Donald Trump’s newly announced 50% tariff rate on his country’s exports, citing a recently adopted Brazilian law that authorizes the government to take proportional countermeasures.
Trump said Wednesday the U.S. will impose the tariff on imports from Brazil starting Aug. 1, partly in retaliation for the ongoing prosecution of the country’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro.
Trump said in a letter that the new tariff — a massive jump from the 10% rate the U.S. imposed on imports from Brazil in early April — is also a response to the “very unfair trade relationship” between the two countries.
The letter to da Silva followed nearly two dozen others that Trump has recently sent to other world leaders, dictating steep new tariff rates on the goods they sell to the U.S.
But the letter to Lula goes further than the rest, by imposing a new U.S. import tax rate explicitly as a punishment for a country engaging in internal political and legal affairs that Trump dislikes.
