The Brazil Congress approves a law to retaliate against Trump’s tariffs

The Chamber of Deputies of Brazil approved on Wednesday a bill that allows retaliation measures against countries that impose commercial barriers, the same day that the US President Donald Trump announced a 10 % tariff for the country’s products.

EFE

The text, whose procedure accelerated after Trump’s return to the White House, already had the back of the Senate and now advances towards his presidential sanction.

The initiative, which received support from both progressive and conservative parties in a symbolic vote, establishes the necessary instruments for Brazil to protect from «unilateral» tariffs imposed by the United States.

Until now, Brazil could not impose tariffs specifically to a single country, since its legislation collected the principles of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which guarantee equal treatment among its partners.

The law approved this Wednesday authorizes, however, increase import taxes on goods and services against a country or economic block that harms the competitiveness of Brazilian products unilaterally in those markets.

It also contemplates the possibility of «suspending commercial concessions or investments» and, ultimately, «suspend concessions related to intellectual property rights.»

Likewise, it provides for diplomatic consultations to mitigate or cancel the effects of the measures and countermeasures, a route that the government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has applied since the first minute with the Trump administration.

The project also includes the assumptions in which the law may be applied.

In this sense, it will be activated when a country or block «interferes with the legitimate and sovereign options of Brazil» through «the application or threat of unilateral commercial measures.»

Also when these actions «are incompatible with the provisions of commercial agreements» in force or constitute environmental unilateral measures «based on more onerous requirements than the parameters, norms and standards adopted by Brazil.»

Called to «national sovereignty»

In the vote in the lower house, the Workers Party (PT), led by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, called to vote in favor to «reaffirm national sovereignty» and warned that the 10 % tariff will have a «very large» impact on the country, especially in key sectors such as the coffee.

«We cannot accept 10 %. It is a lot. Brazil has to have negotiation and response tools, ”PT deputy Carlos Zarathini defended in the gallery.

The Liberal Party (PL), headed by former president Jair Bolsonaro, without success requested to postpone the vote, although he finally supported the text, despite the fact that, hours before, the ultra -rightist leader justified the tariff war by stating that Trump seeks to «protect his country from the socialist virus.»

«It’s time to defend Brazilian agribusiness!» Exclaimed the deputy of the Cavalcante Pl Sóstenes.

The bill was initially drafted in response to the hard environmental legislation of the European Union (EU) against deforestation, which Brazil considers a «protectionist» measure covered with ecologism.

However, the commercial war undertaken by Trump forced to modify the original text to expand its universe, beyond the environmental issue.

In this context, the new document, of Senator Tereza Cristina Corrêa, an influential rural producer and former Minister of Agriculture in the Bolsonaro government (2019-2022), speaks of responding «unilateral measures adopted» by third parties that «impact international competitiveness» of Brazilian products.

Brazil had already been impacted by Trump’s commercial war after 25 % imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum.