The Minister of Development, Industry, Commerce and Services, Márcio Elias Rosa, stated that the senator and pre-candidate for the presidency of the Republic, Flávio Bolsonaro (PL), harmed negotiations between Brazil and the United States on tariffs applied to Brazilian products. According to the minister, Flávio argued to the White House theses that legitimized and endorsed the initial justifications used by the government to tax Brazil.
“He went there to say: ‘Look, there is a lot of corruption, there is no fight against transnational crime’. This was one of the 301’s arguments and was used to justify the tariff. We have a Brazilian with a legislative mandate supporting and recognizing the legitimacy of the US decision. This is terrible for Brazil”, the minister contextualized, in an interview with the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo.
Márcio Elias stated that Brazil is a victim and that the tariffs announced by the Trump administration are a political sanction, not trade regulation. The minister reaffirmed that the Brazilian government will remain firm in negotiations in defense of national interests and that it will aim to expand the list of exempt products.
“Brazil is a victim in this process, but it is not a coward. We will not be frightened in the face of a power, which is really important, significant, and is causing us harm. We will not give in or capitulate,” the minister told the newspaper.
The United States confirmed, on Wednesday night (15), the application of a 25% tariff on imports of Brazilian products. The measure was taken by the local government after an investigation by the Office of the US Trade Representative, which accuses Brazil of “unfair practices” to justify punishing national producers.
When revealing some aspects of the meeting, Elias Rosa described that from the beginning the US government made impractical offers to Brazil, such as reducing import tariffs for industrial goods from the United States to zero, without offering counterparts. The minister’s reading is that this would increase the Brazilian trade deficit in the industrial sector.
“Brazil exports machines, equipment, a lot of the manufacturing industry, transformation industry to the USA. In 15 years, we had a US$450 billion deficit. If we open the market in this way, we will expand the deficit even further. Why would we do this?[…] If the market opens, it destroys this basic industry. Brazil cannot do this. This issue needed to be clear from an early stage, just as we would never negotiate Pix”, argued Elias.
The US decision, in the minister’s assessment, represents a geopolitical risk. The minister stated that the US has always used section 301 as an instrument of diplomatic pressure, but that, this time, there is no reasonable element and that Trump is using tariff maneuvers to interfere in another country’s electoral results.
“What stands out about the current case? It does not use a reasonable purpose. You cannot use tariffs to create political distortion, you cannot use tariff policy to obtain political electoral results in another sovereign nation. That makes no sense. […] I refuse to believe that this is the new normal because this is not how Asia and the European Union continue to act in geopolitics”, pointed out the minister.
Source: www.brasildefato.com.br
