Minister says that 'mistakes' hinder negotiations with the US on tariffs, but that he is 'running against time' for consensus

The Minister of Development, Industry and Commerce, Márcio Elias Rosa, stated this Thursday (2) that some "mistakes" caused by third parties have hindered negotiations between Brazil and the United States regarding the tariffs announced by President Donald Trump.
But he added that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's determination is that the government "never" leaves the negotiating table, leaving ideological issues aside.
Elias Rosa made the statement during an interview in Rio de Janeiro, where he held an agenda. He was asked about a conversation he had this Thursday with the representative of the White House trade office, Jamieson Greer, to try to reverse the tariff.

The deadline given by the White House is July 15th, therefore, the minister assessed, the Brazilian government is "running against time" to try to reach a consensus with the North Americans.
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"Every time we move positively it seems that some obstacle or setback appears and we need to overcome it. [...] President Lula was with President Trump in Malaysia, after that meeting at the UN, then we had consecutive meetings, several phone calls, and they were always very positive", declared the minister.
VALDO: technical cooperation between countries has cooled down
When asked what these "missteps" would be, Márcio Elias Rosa replied:
"Examples could be the executive order from July last year, which announced the need to interfere in the judgment of the Federal Supreme Court, under penalty of imposition of a 40% tariff plus a 10% tariff; the publication, by someone in the United States, of a former federal deputy claiming to be the author or sponsor of the At the same time, here in Brazil, someone is celebrating on social media the fact that it has been imposed. These people always make the job very difficult," he said.
The Lula government has attributed the US tariff threats to articulations by the Bolsonaro family, especially former deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro, against Brazilian institutions. The president has even called the children of former president Jair Bolsonaro "traitors to the country".
Last year, when the Trump administration established a 50% tariff against Brazilian products, Eduardo Bolsonaro publicly thanked the US president for the measure.
For the minister, these behaviors mentioned by him in the interview "pollute the dialogue" between negotiators from Brazil and the United States because they bring "issues to the negotiating table" that should not be being there."
"There is no place at the negotiating table for the economy, bilateral trade, ideological issues, electoral issues, personally opportunistic issues, this has no place", said the minister.
"So, we also have to face this issue. We are facing it with the serenity that the issue demands. In each of these meetings, we have made a little progress. Rosa.
Planalto does not expect a complete reversal
With reservation, assistants to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) say they no longer believe in a complete reversal of tariffs.
They state that the government will try to exhaust the negotiations, as President Lula has advised, showing trade figures between the two countries and presenting technical arguments.
But the assessment is that the USTR's decision has political and not technical motivations, so they say they assess that, at most, there could be some exception or possible rate reduction, but not a complete reversal of the measure.
According to these members of Palácio do Planalto, there is a "line of dialogue" between the two governments, which must be maintained, with meetings between representatives of presidents Lula and Donald Trump.
On Wednesday (1), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent the document formalizing the Brazilian government's official response to the US investigation into Brazilian commercial practices. Signed by Chancellor Mauro Vieira, the statement was delivered on the last day of the scheduled deadline.
In the text, the minister states that the American government's criticism of the PIX and Brazilian court decisions are not related to trade, but to differences over internal policies.
Chancellor Mauro Vieira
Mateus Oliveira/MRE
Documents show disregard for arguments
At Itamaraty, members of Brazilian diplomacy say that the USTR documents demonstrate how the investigation based on section 301 has a political and not technical or commercial character.
According to reports to GloboNews, the documents received by Itamaraty relating to the initial allegations, from July 2025, are "practically the same" as those from the final recommendation, from June 2026.
This shows, for Itamaraty members, that all technical arguments presented to the US over the last year by Brazilian negotiators were disregarded, as do the numbers that demonstrate the drop in deforestation during the Lula government compared to the Bolsonaro government.
A Brazilian delegation, made up of members of the economic and environmental areas of Itamaraty, for example, went to Washington to present this data, and the understanding of diplomacy is that all questions were answered with data, but ended up being ignored.
Márcio Fernando Elias Rosa, current minister of Development, Industry, Commerce and Services (MDIC)
Development, Industry, Commerce and Services / Disclosure

Source: G1