The Trump administration has proposed new punitive tariffs of 25 percent on most imports from Brazil, after determining its practices were unfair on a range of issues from digital commerce to illegal logging, top trade official Jamieson Greer said late Monday.
The measures, under Section 301 of the trade law, cover areas such as electronic payment services, preferential tariffs, intellectual property protection and ethanol market access as well, the Office of the US Trade Representative said.
The proposed new tariffs, subject to public consultation before a July 15 deadline, would exclude some products, such as beef, coffee, rare earths, other minerals, energy and aircraft parts.
The USTR said its investigation of unfair trade practices in Brazil, which began last year under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, had found practices “unfair and burdensome or restrictive to US trade,” opening the door to punitive tariffs.
Greer called Brazil’s action “completely counterintuitive” because of the large exemptions. He said that the trade agency would release the results of a further Section 301 investigation into unfair trade practices in the coming weeks, adding that higher tariffs were needed to fix America’s “huge” trade deficit.
Brazil’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
