# Brazil > [!info] Gateway page > Orientation on Brazil is here. The former president's arc is at [[Jair Bolsonaro]]; the judge at the center of the US dispute is at [[Alexandre de Moraes]]. **Brazil** is in this vault because it is the clearest foreign test of what happens when a Trump-style movement loses an election, tries to overturn it, and is prosecuted. It is also the case in which the second Trump administration most openly used trade and sanctions law on behalf of a foreign politician. **The analogue.** [[Jair Bolsonaro]] governed from 2019 to 2022 on a coalition of evangelicals, military nostalgists and agribusiness that the vault treats as a regional translation of the MAGA formula (see [[Global New Right Network]]). After losing the 2022 runoff to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, he spent the transition contesting the voting system on the [[Stop the Steal]] model, and his supporters stormed Brazil's three branches of government on 8 January 2023. **The conviction.** On 11 September 2025 a five-justice panel of the Supreme Federal Court convicted Bolsonaro, 4–1, on five counts including attempting a coup, and sentenced him to 27 years and 3 months. Detained on 22 November 2025 for tampering with his ankle monitor, he was ordered on 25 November to begin serving the sentence at Federal Police headquarters in Brasília, moved to the Papuda prison complex in mid-January 2026, and granted humanitarian house arrest on 24 March 2026 after a bronchopneumonia hospitalization. On 3 July 2026 Justice Moraes extended the house arrest with no end date. **The US response** came as a tariff, a sanction and a trade investigation, each covered below, and it was explicit. Trump's 9 July 2025 letter announcing a 50% tariff called the trial "a Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!", and the executive order that followed named the "persecuting" of Bolsonaro as one of its grounds. **The 2026 election.** The family stayed on the ballot. In the first round on 4 October 2026, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the former president's son, took 47.07% of valid votes to Lula's 45.12% with 99.84% counted, per the Superior Electoral Court, beating polls that had shown Lula ahead. The runoff is on **25 October 2026**. Bolsonaro's Liberal Party was on track to be the largest party in the Chamber of Deputies, and Michelle and Carlos Bolsonaro won Senate seats (Al Jazeera, 5 October 2026). On 23 September Lula's Workers' Party asked the electoral court to investigate Flávio and his brother Eduardo Bolsonaro for allegedly arranging Trump's support; Courthouse News reports the court found no concrete evidence of foreign interference. ## Economy and the US link *Readings as of 10 October 2026.* | Measure | Reading | |---|---| | Nominal GDP | $2.28 trillion (2025); $2.64 trillion projected for 2026, 10th in the world (IMF World Economic Outlook, April 2026) | | Real growth | +0.5% quarter on quarter and +2.0% year on year in Q2 2026; 1.9% over four quarters (IBGE, 1 September 2026). IMF projects 1.9% for 2026 | | Inflation | IPCA +0.82% in September 2026, 4.58% over 12 months (IBGE, 9 October 2026), just above the 4.5% ceiling of the 3% target band | | Policy rate (Selic) | 13.75% after a unanimous 25bp cut on 16 September 2026, the fifth straight cut since March 2026, when it stood at 15%; the next meeting is 3–4 November | | US goods trade, 2025 | US exports $54.3B, imports $39.9B, **US surplus $14.4B**, up 115.7% on 2024 (Census; USTR) | | US goods trade, 2026 | Surplus of $11.5B in January–July 2026 (Census) | | What the US buys | Fuels, steel, machinery, coffee, aircraft and meat led Brazil's sales to the US in the first half of 2025 (TradeInt, Brazilian export data) | | US tariff, October 2026 | 25% Section 301 Brazil duty (since 22 July 2026) plus 12.5% Section 301 forced-labor duty (since 24 July 2026), with broad product exemptions | **The surplus is the political tell.** US data shows the US selling Brazil more than it buys, so the 2025 tariff could not rest on imbalance. It rested instead on speech, a court and a former president's prosecution. Brazil is the vault's cleanest example of [[Tariffs]] used as a political sanction rather than a trade remedy. **Tariffs: from 50% to the Supreme Court to Section 301.** - **9 July 2025** — Trump letter to Lula announces a 50% tariff from 1 August, tying it to the Bolsonaro trial. - **18 July 2025** — USTR formally opens a Section 301 investigation of Brazil (90 Fed. Reg. 34069) covering digital trade and electronic payments, preferential tariffs, anti-corruption enforcement, intellectual property, ethanol market access and illegal deforestation. - **30 July 2025** — Executive Order 14323, under the [[International Emergency Economic Powers Act]], adds a 40% duty on Brazilian goods effective 6 August, on top of the 10% "reciprocal" rate, for 50% in total. The order cites Brazilian court orders to US platforms, Moraes, and Bolsonaro's prosecution. Annex I exempted about 700 products, including civil aircraft, energy, iron ore and orange juice. Meat, coffee and fruit paid the full rate. - **20 November 2025** — Executive Order 14361 removes the 40% duty from beef, coffee, tea, fruits, nuts and juices, retroactive to goods entered from 13 November, after Trump and Lula met in Malaysia in October. - **20 February 2026** — [[Learning Resources v. Trump]] voids both IEEPA layers. A temporary global surcharge under Section 122 of the [[Trade Act of 1974]] applies from 24 February until it lapses on 24 July. - **1 June 2026** — USTR finds all six Brazilian practices actionable. Its electronic-payments finding targets Pix, the central bank's instant-payment system. It proposes a 25% tariff. - **15 July 2026** — USTR finalizes the 25% tariff, effective 22 July. Civil aircraft, goods under [[Section 232]] and listed products such as coffee are exempt. - **24 July 2026** — Brazil is placed in the 12.5% tier of the [[Section 301 Forced Labor Tariffs]]. The two duties come from separate proceedings, so exposure depends on the product. The Atlantic Council calls 37.5% the potential maximum and reports that more than half of Brazil's exports to the US remain exempt. - **13 August 2026** — Brazil opens consultations under its 2025 Economic Reciprocity Law, a preliminary step that imposes no countermeasures yet. **Sanctions on a judge.** On 30 July 2025 Treasury's [[Office of Foreign Assets Control]] designated Justice [[Alexandre de Moraes]] under the Global [[Magnitsky Act]] authority, citing arbitrary pretrial detention and suppression of expression. On 22 September 2025 it added his wife, Viviane Barci de Moraes, and their family's Lex Institute. On **12 December 2025** OFAC removed all three, after a phone call between Trump and Lula. It gave no public reason. The designation lasted under five months. **BRICS and the dollar.** Brazil is a founding member of [[BRICS]] and hosted its July 2025 summit in Rio. When Trump threatened an extra 10% tariff on any country "aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS," Lula answered on 7 July 2025: "We don't want an emperor." He added that the world needs trade that does not "pass through the dollar." The rhetoric outruns the practice. The Rio declaration itself spoke only of local-currency use (see [[De-dollarization]]). Within South America, Brazil's trade strategy runs through [[Mercosur]], where it is in open conflict with [[Javier Milei]]'s Argentina over bilateral deals with Washington. **Why it matters here.** Brazil shows the toolkit the administration built for a foreign ally of its movement: emergency tariffs, sanctions on judges, and a trade investigation broad enough to reach a central bank's payment system. It also shows the limits. The Supreme Court voided the IEEPA tariff, the food exemptions had already hollowed it out, and the Magnitsky designation was traded away in diplomacy. What survives is a Section 301 duty on a surplus partner, heading into a runoff the Bolsonaro family may win. ## Where to go from here | Destination | What's there | |---|---| | [[Jair Bolsonaro]] | The former president, the coup case and the MAGA parallel | | [[Alexandre de Moraes]] | The judge, the conviction and the US sanctions | | [[Global New Right Network]] | The transnational infrastructure Bolsonarism plugs into | | [[Learning Resources v. Trump]] | The ruling that ended the IEEPA tariffs | | [[Section 301 Forced Labor Tariffs]] | The July 2026 multi-country action | | [[Trade Act of 1974]] | The Section 301 and Section 122 authorities | | [[Magnitsky Act]] | The sanctions authority used on Moraes | | [[BRICS]] | The bloc and its de-dollarization talk | | [[Mercosur]] | Brazil's regional trade bloc | ## See also [[Global Economy Hub]] · [[Countries Hub]] · [[De-dollarization]] · [[Tariffs]] · [[International Democratic Opposition Hub]] · [[Venezuela]] · [[Colombia]]