SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Thursday that his government has not been successful in trying to negotiate the 50% tariff on Brazilian imports that U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to impose.
Washington has ignored Brazil's attempts to negotiate ahead of the measure’s expected implementation on Aug. 1., the Brazilian leader said.
“Brazil is used to negotiating,” Lula said. “We had already 10 meetings with the United States. On May 16, we sent them a letter asking for clarification on the proposals we had made."
“They didn’t respond. They responded through a website,” Lula added, referring to Trump's post on his social media platform Truth Social on July 9, announcing the tariff.
Trump directly linked the import tax to the trial underway in Brazil of his ally, the country’s former President Jair Bolsonaro, which he called a “witch hunt.”
Rather than backing down, Brazil’s Supreme Court escalated the case, worsening Bolsonaro’s legal troubles. Federal police has raided Bolsonaro’s home and political office, ordered him to wear an ankle monitor, banned him from using social media and levelled other restrictions.
Lula spoke Thursday in Vale do Jequitinhonha, one of Brazil’s poorest regions in the state of Minas Gerais, repeating his mantra of needing to “defend” Brazil's resources — a message he has adopted since the trade dispute escalated.
In related developments, Brazil's Vice President Geraldo Alckmin told reporters in the capital, Brasilia, that he had a 50-minute phone call last Saturday with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Alckmin, who also serves as Brazil’s minister of Commerce, Industry and Trade, declined to share details of the conversation, saying it was confidential.
“I reiterated Brazil’s willingness to negotiate — that’s our position," Alckmin, said. "Brazil never left the table. We didn’t create this problem, but we want to solve it.”
Separately, Brazil raised concerns on Wednesday at a World Trade Organization meeting, arguing that arbitrary tariffs violate the organization’s core principles but making no mention of Trump or the United States,
“Arbitrary tariffs, chaotically announced and implemented, are disrupting global value chains and risk throwing the world economy into a spiral of high prices and stagnation,” Brazil’s Ambassador Philip Fox-Drummond Gough said.
WTO member states are witnessing “an extremely dangerous shift toward the use of tariffs as a tool to interfere in the domestic affairs of third countries,” he added.
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