Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has branded his main electoral rival Senator Flávio Bolsonaro a "traitor to the nation" and attacked Secretary of State Marco Rubio as a "mortal enemy" of Latin America, as Washington proposed sweeping 25% tariffs on a broad range of Brazilian imports just weeks after the two leaders had agreed a lull in trade tensions.

The US Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer, announced the proposed measure following a Section 301 investigation that concluded Brazil had engaged in unfair trade practices, citing inadequate enforcement of intellectual property rights and anti-deforestation laws, restrictions on ethanol market access, and insufficient efforts to combat corruption. Brazil has until July 15 to take what Washington described as "responsive action", with a public hearing scheduled for July 6.

Lula said the announcement had blindsided him. He and President Donald Trump, he noted, had agreed at a recent White House meeting to a 30-day window to resolve their bilateral trade differences. "This comes while we were still in negotiations," he said.

The proposal marks the second significant setback for Lula since that meeting. Last week, Washington designated Brazil's two most powerful criminal organisations, Primeiro Comando da Capital and Comando Vermelho, as terrorist groups, a move Brasília had consistently opposed.

Speaking at the inauguration of the new permanent headquarters of the Instituto Federal Goiano in Catalão on June 2, Lula directed particular anger at Rubio, suggesting the top US diplomat had played a role in the tariff decision. "This Marco Rubio guy — who is the mortal enemy of several Latin American countries and who doesn't like Brazil — was not at the meeting I had with Trump," he said. He added that he had raised his concerns about Rubio directly with Trump during their three-hour White House encounter, telling the US president that the secretary of state was "anti-Latin American" and a "mortal enemy of Cuba and several Latin American countries."

"Since I don't have ships to wage Trump's wars, atomic bombs, or military might, my war is one of truth against lies, against narratives," Lula said, adding that he had sent communications to Washington to refute the arguments underpinning the trade measures.

The president also invoked a charged historical reference in attacking Flávio Bolsonaro, whose visit to the White House last week — where he met Trump, Vice-President JD Vance, and Rubio — preceded the tariff announcement by days. "For less than that, Joaquim Silvério dos Reis, who betrayed Tiradentes, was hanged. That's what traitors to the homeland deserve when they ask for intervention from a foreign country," Lula said, referencing a figure synonymous with colonial-era betrayal in Brazilian national memory. He also called Bolsonaro, the right-wing candidate in October's presidential election, a “coward” and a “sellout”, and accused him of engineering the tariff threat for electoral gain. Lula further alleged that both Flávio and his brother Eduardo Bolsonaro, a former congressman, had publicly welcomed last year's US tariff announcement, accusing Flávio of now lying about his position. "Today Flávio says he didn't say anything, but he's lying, just like Eduardo Bolsonaro also gave thanks when Brazil was targeted," he said.

Bolsonaro categorically denied the accusations, insisting he had explicitly asked Trump and Rubio not to penalise Brazilian companies. "I expressly asked them not to apply tariffs to Brazilian companies," he said. He attributed Washington's decision not to any request on his part but to deep scepticism within the Republican administration towards Lula. "Lula earned the distrust of the US government. He leaves the White House and then returns to Brazil to speak ill of Trump and fuel anti-American sentiment," Bolsonaro said. He added that a government under his leadership, which he said would begin in 2027, would negotiate with Washington "on equal terms".

Trump appeared to lend indirect backing to Bolsonaro, posting photographs of their meeting and praising the senator as "a smart young man who loves his country, Brazil, very much."

Despite the severity of his language towards Bolsonaro and Rubio, Lula stopped short of direct confrontation with Trump, leaving open the prospect of diplomatic talks to defuse the dispute. Brasília nonetheless signalled it would not absorb the measures passively. The Brazilian government issued a statement warning it reserved the right to invoke its recently passed Reciprocity Law, approved unanimously by Congress, to respond to any tariffs it considered unjust under international trade rules.

The proposed duties, which would exempt certain goods including beef, coffee, rare earth metals and aircraft equipment, come despite the United States having run a trade surplus with Brazil for the past decade, and despite having largely withdrawn a previous round of 50% tariffs imposed last year. Those earlier levies had been triggered in part by pressure from the Bolsonaro family seeking to halt the prosecution of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who was subsequently sentenced to 27 years in prison for his role in an attempted coup following his 2022 election defeat.

Brian Winter, editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly and a seasoned Latin America analyst, argued that the mixed signals from the Trump administration reflect competing factions rather than a coherent strategy. "The only way to understand our Brazil policy is to admit there is no single Brazil policy," he wrote in a LinkedIn post, describing the net effect as a White House "pressing the accelerator and brakes at the same time," a dynamic he noted extended well beyond Brazil's borders.

"You have different power centers in the administration pushing different priorities — some want Brazil's rare earths as a China hedge, which probably requires a good relationship with Lula. Others want a fellow traveler back in charge of Latin America's biggest country, hence the efforts to favour the Bolsonaros," Winter said.

The United States is Brazil's second-largest trading partner. The tariff threat has once again thrown into sharp relief how the two countries' relationship, and its hectic management, has become a central fault line in Brazil's electoral campaign, with Lula seeking to cast himself as a defender of national sovereignty while Bolsonaro attempts to leverage his ideological proximity to Trump without being seen to endorse measures that could damage the Brazilian economy.