President Trump said Wednesday he would impose a 50% tariff on goods from Brazil next month, citing the criminal prosecution of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, which Mr. Trump called an "international disgrace."

Washington

Donald Trump has signed an order to impose tariffs imports into the U.S. from countries including China, Mexico and Canada.

Global Tariffs

President Donald Trump has stated he will impose a 50% tariff on goods imported from Brazil, citing the criminal prosecution of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro as an "international disgrace" and calling for the proceedings to end. While most recent tariff threats have been justified by trade disparities, the reasoning for Brazil is linked to political developments involving Bolsonaro, who faces charges related to efforts to overturn a recent election.

The proposed tariff could impact a range of imports from Brazil, including coffee, machinery, plastics, and rubber, potentially affecting both U.S. consumers and businesses. Brazilian officials have indicated they may retaliate with tariffs on U.S. goods. The announcement has also contributed to uncertainty among Federal Reserve officials regarding the potential economic effects of tariffs on inflation and interest rates.

Trump cites 'witch hunt' against former Brazilian president in tariff threat

Welcome back to CBS News 24-7. President Donald Trump has sent letters to several more countries announcing tariff rates if those countries do not strike a deal by the first part of August. Now, while the majority are for what Mr. Trump calls trade disparities, the letter sent to Brazil has a different reasoning, or at least some are wondering. President Trump accused Brazil's government of subjecting the country's former president to what he calls a witch hunt. Sound familiar? He's demanding it end immediately. All caps also sound familiar and look familiar. Former President Bolsonaro faces charges that he tried to overturn the recent election that he lost. So let's get to CBS News Money Watch correspondent Kelly O'Grady live for us once again in New York. So Kelly, this new tariff rate on Brazil, what kind of ripple effects could it trigger? Because it's a big one. It is, 50%, right? That is certainly very big. So you have to think about this in sort of two different dynamics. First, what does it mean for consumers in the US? And think about the types of things that we import from Brazil. I think coffee's probably the most top of mind for people because it's something that you and I might go buy at the store. Now, we also import a lot of coffee from a number of other places like Costa Rica, Vietnam. So it's not all coming from Brazil. It doesn't mean your cup of coffee is gonna spike. But you also get things like machinery, plastics, rubber. So big imports for businesses that are making products that you and I buy. And so if they're paying more, that's likely going to trickle down at least somewhat to you and me. The other thing though, is because this is such a high tariff, we did hear from the leader of Brazil saying that they would plan to retaliate if this actually went into effect. And likely that would take the form of them putting tariffs on US goods going into the country. And that means that businesses that are selling to Brazilians, all of a sudden their product gets more expensive. It's harder for them to keep that business if all of a sudden something is more expensive, higher than what people had seen before. Final point I wanna make, you mentioned the political aspect of this. The president also highlighted that this is because of unfair trade practices. We actually have a trade surplus with Brazil. That means that we export more to them than they export to us, right? They buy more from us than we buy from them. So that was a little bit of a question mark of really what the motivations are behind this particular tariff. Okay, a lot to watch as we approach that August deadline. We also have new insight from you relative to how concerned some members of the Federal Reserve are about the president's tariffs. What more do we know about that? So at the last Federal Reserve interest rate decision, they published their expectations for how many interest rates that we, interest rate cuts that we expect for the year. It was still two. But there are a lot of different folks that are on that Federal Reserve Board of Governors. And in fact, they have a lot of different opinions. And so I was reading the minutes, essentially the transcript of all the conversations that happened during that meeting. And you heard from some people saying, we think that we're gonna get two. Some people think one, some people think none. And there's vastly different opinions on how tariffs are going to impact inflation, the labor market, consumer spending. And so what this means is it's really hard for anyone who's trying to plan around mortgage rates, around small business loans, what that's going to be like. It's a really big wild card now, it seems, of how many interest rate cuts we would get this year. Yeah, suddenly Zillow is not quite as fun to browse anymore, Kelly O'Grady. Thank you so much for talking to me today.

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Kyiv

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Trump cites 'witch hunt' against former Brazilian president in tariff threat

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