RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) \u2014 Brazilian Vice President Geraldo Alckmin said Saturday that Brazilian exported goods to the U.S. including coffee, beef and tropical fruits would still be tariffed 40%, despite President Donald Trump\u2019s decision to remove some import taxes.<\/p>\n
In a dramatic move on Friday, Trump scrapped levies<\/a> announced in April on what he called \u2018Liberation Day\u2019 in hopes of encouraging domestic production and lifting the U.S. economy. Brazil at the time was hit with a 10% tariff.<\/p>\n But in July, Trump imposed a further 40% tariff<\/a>, citing \u2014 among other reasons \u2014 the trial of his ally, former President Jair Bolsonaro, which he called a \u201cwitch hunt.\u201d Proceedings went ahead regardless and in September Bolsonaro was sentenced<\/a> to 27 years and three months in prison for attempting a coup.<\/p>\n Alckmin said some products, such as orange juice, would now have a zero tariff as they were not targeted by the additional 40%. But that extra tariff remains in place on products including coffee, beef and tropical fruits, such as mangos and pineapples.<\/p>\n While Brazil\u2019s vice president welcomed Trump\u2019s latest decision, which he called \u201cpositive\u201d and a \u201cstep in the right direction,\u201d he said there remained a \u201cdistortion that needs to be corrected.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone got 10% less, but in Brazil\u2019s case, which had 50%, we ended up with 40%, which is very high,\u201d Alckmin told journalists in the capital Brasilia.<\/p>\n Alckmin said that Friday\u2019s decision means that 26% of Brazilian goods are now entering the U.S. without additional tariffs. That\u2019s up from 23%. <\/p>\n Trump\u2019s July decision, which was overtly political as Brazil<\/a> has a trade deficit with the United States, led to the worst U.S.-Brazil relations in history.<\/p>\n Those relations have since improved, and in October Brazilian President Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva and Trump met in Malaysia. <\/p>\n \u201cPresident Lula\u2019s conversation with President Donald Trump was important in terms of dialogue and negotiation,\u201d Alckmin said on Saturday.<\/p>\n After that encounter, Lula said he was confident<\/a> the two countries would soon reach a trade deal.<\/p>\n U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Brazil\u2019s Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira met for 50 minutes this week to further the conversation.<\/p>\n The Trump administration has insisted that its tariffs helped fill government coffers and weren\u2019t a major factor in higher prices at grocery stores around the country. But Democrats were quick to paint Friday\u2019s move as an acknowledgment that Trump\u2019s policies were hurting American pocketbooks.<\/p>\n Record-high beef prices<\/a> have been a particular concern, and Trump had said he intended to take action to try and lower them. Trump\u2019s tariffs on Brazil<\/a>, a major beef exporter, had been a factor.<\/p>\n Back in Brazil, the Brazilian Association of the Coffee Industry said it would continue to monitor the situation.<\/p>\n \u201c(We) will keep working to ensure legal certainty, competitiveness, and predictability for the Brazilian coffee industry,\u201d the group\u2019s president, Pavel Cardoso, said in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) \u2014 Brazilian Vice President Geraldo Alckmin said Saturday that Brazilian exported goods to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[93738,575,23814,138,23812,65,5022,219,246,82320,4174,339,4173,23711,93740,93737,111,139,69,93739,135,45117,23813,18387],"class_list":["post-137396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-brasilia","tag-brazil","tag-brazil-government","tag-business","tag-central-america","tag-donald-trump","tag-economic-policy","tag-economy","tag-finance","tag-finance-business","tag-geraldo-alckmin","tag-international-trade","tag-jair-bolsonaro","tag-latin-america","tag-marco-rubio","tag-mauro-vieira","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pavel-cardoso","tag-politics","tag-rio-de-janeiro","tag-south-america","tag-tariffs-and-global-trade"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}