Brazil will take the tariff fight to Milwaukee days before its election

Brazil's development minister, Marcio Elias Rosa, said on 14 September that he expects to meet United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in person on the margins of the G20 trade ministers' meeting in Milwaukee on 30 September and 1 October. Foreign minister Mauro Vieira will be in the room. Technical teams have been exchanging papers since Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Donald Trump spoke by telephone on 31 August. This would be the first face-to-face tariff session since that call.

The United States now applies additional duties that, stacked with other measures, reach 37.5 percent on some Brazilian goods. Brazil's Development, Industry, Trade and Services Ministry says the new measures touch 23.1 percent of Brazilian exports to the United States. Those exports were $17.4 billion in the first half of 2026, down 13 percent from a year earlier. The American share of Brazil's total exports fell to 9.4 percent, the lowest since 1997.

Elias Rosa told reporters that Brazil rejects what it calls unjustified unilateral tariffs and will defend firms and workers, but will not close its own market in reply. Brazil believes in multilateralism, dialogue and negotiation. We will not abandon those principles, he said. He also said the conversation is open, and Brazil is willing to negotiate.

The calendar is tight for reasons that have nothing to do with Milwaukee's hotel roster. Brazil's first-round presidential election is on 4 October, days after the G20 session. A Datafolha poll last week put Lula at 39 percent and Flavio Bolsonaro at 35 percent. The Supreme Court is in a separate crisis that has already entered the campaign. A tariff meeting with Trump's trade representative, held while that campaign is live, will be read in Brasilia as either a relief rally or a humiliation, depending on whether any duty actually moves.

Trump's relationship with the Bolsonaro family is part of the room even if it is not on the agenda. Flavio Bolsonaro is running as the heir to a president who aligned with Trump. Lula is running as the incumbent who has to bargain with the same White House. Elias Rosa's line about multilateralism is a Brazilian official speaking to a domestic audience that still treats the WTO as a norm. Greer's brief is to keep the tariffs that Washington has already imposed unless Brasilia offers something specific.

What Brasilia can offer is limited. Brazil does not want a consumer-goods flood in return for relief on meat, steel, coffee or aircraft-related trade. It also does not want to be seen, three weeks before a vote, as trading away a sector for a photo. The 13 percent drop in first-half exports to the United States is already a campaign number. A 9.4 percent share of total exports is another. Those figures will be on the table whether or not the ministers admit it.

The G20 wrapper gives both sides a reason to meet without calling it a climbdown. Ministers will be in Milwaukee anyway. A bilateral hour can be logged as process. Process is not a cut in the 37.5 percent stacked rate. Exporters in Sao Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul will judge the trip by the rate, not by the joint statement.

Lula's August call reopened a channel that had been frozen. The September ministerial is the first test of whether that channel can move goods. If Greer and Elias Rosa leave Milwaukee with only an agreement to keep talking, the October election will be fought with the tariffs still on. If they leave with a sectoral truce, the campaign will claim it. Either way, the 23.1 percent of bilateral trade now under the new measures is the inventory that diplomacy has to clear.

Brazil has said it will not start a trade war. The United States has not said it will lift the duties. Those two sentences are the starting positions in Wisconsin. The weeks between 15 September and 4 October will show whether they are also the ending positions.