Rubio's letter to Flávio Bolsonaro

Officials in Brasília and Washington privately acknowledge that relations between the two countries are adversarial — and likely to stay that way for now. Brazil is bracing for a 37.5% US import tariff across a wide range of goods: a 25% levy for allegedly unfair trade practices plus 12.5% tied to forced-labor concerns.

That hostility will be a campaign issue as October's election nears. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's administration wants to pin the tariffs on the Bolsonaro family, its far-right rivals.

Eduardo Bolsonaro, a former congressman, has lived in the US for more than a year and spent 2025 lobbying Washington for tariffs and sanctions against Brazilian officials — a failed bid to pressure the Supreme Court out of convicting his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, of attempting a coup. 

Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest brother and Bolsonarism's standard-bearer for the presidential election, recently wrote to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, pleading against the tariffs. It didn't work.