The United States government is expected to announce by Wednesday (15/07) whether it will apply new tariffs against Brazil as part of a major investigation into Brazilian commercial practices considered unfair by the White House — including attacks on Pix. A document from the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) released last month suggests retaliatory tariffs of 25% against Brazilian products — but a final decision had not yet been made, amid negotiations between Brazil and the US. If the retaliations suggested by the USTR are actually adopted, Brazil will become the second country with the highest tariffs applied to its products by the USA — only Chinese products imported by the Americans would have higher taxes. The data comes from an initiative called Global Trade Alert (GTA), in which global trade data is compiled by the St. Gallen Endowment, an independent think tank based in Switzerland. Currently, Brazil is the 13th country with the highest tariffs imposed by the USA, according to GTA calculations. With an effective average tariff of 11.73%, the country is behind China, Turkey, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Germany, India, Austria, Sweden and Italy. But, if the 25% tariff is confirmed by the Trump administration, Brazil would jump to second place. China is the country that saw its average import tariffs rise the most in Trump's second term — an increase of 27%, compared to the tariffs applied by the Biden administration, Johannes Fritz, director of the St. Gallen Endowment, told BBC News Brasil. According to GTA data, if the tariffs proposed by the USTR come to fruition, Brazil would be the second country that suffered the most tariff increases in Trump's second term — a predicted average increase of 18%. GTA data only considers effective tariffs — that is, those actually charged on products — and not nominal tariffs — which are those explicit in legislation and announced by the government. Why is Brazil so targeted? What justifies Brazil being so targeted by the Trump administration's second term, given that it is only the USA's 17th largest trading partner? "This would be an attempt to read the signals coming from Washington. What seems plausible is that it has a component of personal or, at least, political alliances, since Bolsonaro was explicitly mentioned", says Fritz. Last year, when the US announced the imposition of a 50% tax on Brazilian exports, Trump cited his discontent with the fact that former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) had become a defendant for an attempted coup d'état. Bolsonaro was convicted in September last year and is currently serving a 27-year sentence under house arrest. But the director of the study center in Switzerland also states that Brazil may be being targeted by the American government for its technological policies. According to him, Brazil is among the economies that risked confronting US technology companies, alongside the European Union and Australia. "There are also concerns about the technological policy aspect, in which Brazil has exposed itself in the past with court decisions against platforms with regard to content protection, for example," says Fritz. Examples include the decision by Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), to take the video-sharing platform Rumble offline in February 2025 and the blocking of "This is the standard [of the White House]. If there is a standard, right? The announcement of the tariff is a way of bringing the commercial partner to the table and imposing whatever it is rather than actually implementing crazily [the announced tariffs]", Zeidan told BBC News Brasil. For him, however, these negotiations will not necessarily have a strictly economic and commercial logic. "The entire American argument to justify tariffs with other countries is that the US has a trade deficit. But, with Brazil, the US exports twice what Brazilians export to them. So this argument doesn't even make sense in this case." "Clearly the US is not driven by economic logic. It is driven by nationalist and political logic." What is the investigation against Brazil? In July last year, the United States government opened a trade investigation against Brazil based on the so-called Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, a legal instrument that allows Washington to investigate foreign practices considered unfair or discriminatory against American companies and products. The procedure, conducted by the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), may result in retaliatory measures, such as the imposition of additional tariffs on Brazilian exports. One of the consequences of this investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act is that the US may take punitive measures, such as imposing tariffs or import restrictions. In the Brazilian case, the USTR document proposes that "appropriate action would include the application of 25% tariffs on all Brazilian products", but with several exceptions that are listed in an annex. The American government concluded that certain practices of the Brazilian government are "unreasonable" and "encumber or restrict U.S. commerce." One of the targets of the American document is the Pix payment system. "Brazil has unfairly harmed American companies that operate in competing electronic payment services, including through policies that favor its national champion, Pix", states the document. The American government accuses the Brazilian Central Bank of playing a dual role in Pix — "as regulator and owner/operator" — creating a "conflict of interests, in the absence of adequate procedural safeguards". The USTR document has 107 pages and brings conclusions from the investigation in six different areas: Digital commerce and electronic payment services: according to the American government, "Brazilian courts have issued confidential decisions ordering American social media companies to remove certain political content and suspend profiles of residents in the United States — in some cases, with global reach —, in addition to prohibiting the platforms from informing users about these orders." The document talks about the imposition of high fines, restrictions on access to assets, accounts and payment systems in Brazil and, in at least one case, the total blocking of a website. Preferential tariffs considered unfair: "through preferential trade agreements of limited scope with Mexico and India — which cover sectors in which these countries are advanced and globally competitive producers — Brazil grants lower tariffs and preferential treatment to hundreds of Mexican and Indian products in several sectors." Fighting corruption: "Brazil does not adopt sufficient inspection measures to combat bribery and corruption practices." Protection of intellectual property: "Brazil does not adequately reinforce the application of its criminal laws and customs regulations to combat counterfeit products"; "does not solve the excessive delay in analyzing patent applications, especially in the biopharmaceutical sector"; and "does not maintain consistent and continuous actions against piracy". Access to the ethanol market: in 2017, "Brazil abruptly interrupted the previously balanced tariff treatment for ethanol and, since then, has not offered reciprocity to American exports." Illegal deforestation: despite having a legal framework to combat illegal deforestation, "Brazil has historically been unable to apply it effectively, and the practice persists." Analysts say the Trump administration has been using Section 301 investigations as an alternative to another tariff proposal that was struck down by the country's Supreme Court. In February, the court ruled that Trump overstepped his authority by using a different law — the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977 — to impose sweeping tariffs on US trading partners, including Brazil. The legislation used now — Section 301 of the Commerce Act of 1974 — would withstand legal challenges, experts say. Trump government criticizes Pix, ethanol and corruption and threatens to retaliate with 25% tariffs on products from Brazil Pix threatened? What is the Trump administration's investigation into trade practices in Brazil