The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), which oversees U.S. trade policy, cited deforestation in Brazil as one of the grounds for its Section 301 investigation. The investigation resulted in an additional 25% tariff on certain Brazilian products, which took effect Wednesday. According to the U.S. government, lax enforcement of environmental laws lowers production costs and amounts to an unfair trade practice.
“The environmental argument doesn’t hold up. I don’t see how Brazilian deforestation can be characterized as an unfair trade practice that justifies this kind of sanction,” said former ambassador Regis Arslanian, a partner at Licks Attorneys and a member of the Foreign Trade Council (Coscex) of the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo (Fiesp). Arslanian spent more than three decades at Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The former diplomat also questioned the United States’ credibility in invoking environmental concerns, noting that the country withdrew from the Paris Agreement, the world’s main treaty for addressing the climate crisis, and skipped COP30, the UN climate conference held in Belém last year.
Read more: Valor Econômico
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