Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Monday he asked President Trump to remove hefty tariffs on his nation’s products as the leaders tried to move beyond a summertime trade fight.
Mr. Lula, writing on X, said their phone call served as an opportunity “for the restoration of the 201-year friendly relations between the two largest democracies in the West.”
“During the phone call, I recalled that Brazil is one of the three G20 countries with which the United States maintains a surplus in the balance of goods and services,” Mr. Lula said. “I requested that President Trump remove the 40% surtax imposed on national products and the restrictive measures applied against Brazilian authorities.”
Mr. Trump imposed a 40% tariff on Brazilian imports in July, on top of a baseline tariff of 10%.
The whopping rate of 50% was a bit of a shock, given the countries’ friendly relations, but Mr. Trump said Brazil had gone too far in prosecuting his ally, former Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro.
The tariffs raised the prospects of price increases on items like coffee, a staple of American daily life but of which the U.S. grows very little while Brazil is by far the world’s biggest producer and exporter.
Mr. Lula refused to relent to Mr. Trump’s demands about Mr. Bolsonaro and parallel complaints about Brazil’s new regulations on social media. He said the U.S. sells more products to Brazil than Brazil sells to American markets, so Mr. Trump’s typical complaint about trade deficits do not apply here.
However, Mr. Lula declined to retaliate against U.S. tariffs and left the door open to negotiation.
Now, the leaders are trying to patch things up.
“I had a very good telephone call with President Lula, of Brazil,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. “We discussed many things, but it was mostly focused on the Economy, and Trade, between our two Countries. We will be having further discussions, and will get together in the not too distant future, both in Brazil and the United States.”
Mr. Lula said they might meet at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit in Malaysia. He renewed his invitation for Mr. Trump to participate in the COP30 climate change conference in Belem, Brazil.
The leaders, who enjoyed a warm interaction at the recent U.N. General Assembly in New York, also swapped digits.
“President Trump and I exchanged phone numbers to establish a direct line of communication,” Mr. Lula said.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.