Trump threatens Brazil with taxes and defends “reciprocal” tariffs

The president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, has placed Brazil in the crosshairs with its customs taxes. Trump stated that the country “charges too much” for US products. “We will treat people very fairly, but the word ‘reciprocal’ is important.

“India charges a lot, Brazil charges a lot. If they want to charge us, that’s fine, but we’re going to charge the same thing”, he teased.

The threat from the next American president occurred during his first press conference after his election in November and was held at Mar-A-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida.

It was also the first time since winning the election that Trump explicitly mentioned Brazil as a target of his threats to increase tariffs. Previously, the tycoon had already mentioned Mexico, Canada, China and even mentioned the Brics – a bloc of which Brazil is part – as a possible target of his new protectionism measures.

He even said, last month, that he would impose 100% tariffs on the bloc’s countries if they tried to end the prevalence of the dollar.

Since 2002, Canada, China and Mexico have remained the United States’ main trading partners, when China replaced Japan in this triad, in its first year as a member of the World Trade Organization.

Current US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Tuesday she is concerned that the president-elect’s plans to impose broad import tariffs could derail progress in curbing inflation and increase costs for families and businesses.

“This would have an adverse impact on the competitiveness of some sectors of the U.S. economy and could significantly increase costs for families,” Yellen added. “So this is a strategy that I fear could derail the progress we have made on inflation and have adverse consequences for growth.”

The Republican, however, said this Monday that the charges will make the country richer and ruled out a potential increase in inflation with the increase in the price of crucial products, for example, for the manufacture of automobiles.