SAO PAULO (Reuters) -Brazil Finance Minister Fernando Haddad said on Monday that his virtual meeting with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had been canceled after initially being scheduled for Wednesday.
That was a setback for the Brazilian government, which had hoped to use the meeting to negotiate tariffs after U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration imposed 50% duties on several Brazilian goods.
Speaking to GloboNews TV, Haddad said no new date had been set for the call, despite Brazil’s request to reschedule it following the cancellation notice.
The minister lamented that Brazil was not even able to sit at the table to negotiate tariffs with the United States and criticized what he called “pseudo-Brazilians” in Washington lobbying against their own country.
The tariff hike was linked by the Trump administration to the trial of his right-wing ally, former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing charges over an alleged coup attempt following his 2022 electoral defeat.
Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, Bolsonaro’s son, has been in the U.S. since March, campaigning for sanctions against those responsible for the judicial proceedings.
Haddad said Brazil will need to explore other markets more aggressively, highlighting Southeast Asia as a promising region and calling for urgent progress on a trade deal between South American bloc Mercosur and the European Union.
The minister also said the government will soon issue an executive order to address the impact of higher U.S. tariffs.
The package will include structural reforms to Brazil’s export guarantee mechanisms through the Export Guarantee Fund (FGE).
According to Haddad, the order will also support certain government purchases and credit measures, forming a multi-pronged response as there is no single solution for the roughly 10,000 companies affected.
(Reporting by Gabriel Araujo in Sao Paulo and Marcela Ayres in Brasilia, editing by Ed Osmond)
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