Brazil Faces Hidden Tariff Risks as Trump Administration Shifts Strategy Away From Global Duties
Brazil’s place in Donald Trump’s new tariff world is shifting fast, even if Brazil is not yet the headline target that China, Europe, or Mexico have become.
According to the Yale Budget Lab’s April 8, 2026 “State of U.S. Tariffs” report, the current U.S. tariff regime—after court challenges—and assuming some emergency measures expire, is projected to raise about $1.3 trillion over the next decade. Brazil is woven into that story because most of its major exports to the United States sit in sectors now under structural tariff pressure: metals, agriculture-linked products, energy inputs, and industrial components.
Logistics firm Dimerco’s 2026 U.S. Tariff Update notes that President Trump has doubled Section 232 tariffs on most steel and aluminum imports from 25% to 50%. While some partners, like the European Union and Japan, have effective caps around 15% when combined with normal duties, Brazil is not singled out for that kind of relief. For Brazilian steel and aluminum producers, this means that access to the U.S. market depends on either product-specific exclusions or carefully structured supply chains that route value-added products through countries with better tariff treatment.
At the same time, Baker Botts’ “Trump Tariff Tracker – May 8, 2026” documents a rapidly expanding menu of global tariffs: new 25% duties on specified semiconductors, potential 25% tariffs on countries trading with Iran, and discretionary tariffs tied to trade with Cuba and Venezuela. None of these measures name Brazil directly, but they create significant indirect risk. Any Brazilian company in energy, shipping, or commodity trading that touches sanctioned oil flows, or that relies on inputs from countries targeted over Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, or Russia, could suddenly find its exports to the United States facing a steep, discretionary tariff wall.
On top of that, Trump’s universal tariff push—10% global tariffs imposed under various emergency and trade statutes—has been partially clawed back in court. The Our Take commentary from Baker Botts reports that on May 7, 2026, the U.S. Court of International Trade struck down Trump’s 10% global tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, ruling it was never meant to be a broad, long-term tariff power. Separately, MSNBC’s coverage in “Trump’s tariff fallout deepens after court refund ruling” describes a Supreme Court decision invalidating many International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs, forcing the government to refund tens of billions of dollars.
For Brazilian exporters, those court decisions temporarily reduce some tariff burdens and may generate refunds for importers of Brazilian goods, but they also push the White House to lean harder on more traditional tools like Section 232 and targeted country lists. In practice, that means less blanket, across-the-board tariffs and more sector-by-sector pressure where Brazil is heavily exposed—especially metals, machinery components, and any trade that intersects sanctioned jurisdictions.
The bottom line for Brazil: tariffs aimed at other countries can still hit Brazilian supply chains; legal wins against Trump’s emergency tariffs may be short-lived as the administration looks for new legal hooks; and the risk premium on exporting into the U.S. has gone up, even when the headline tariff rate on Brazil itself hasn’t.
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