Trade Disputes Likely to Spoil Dinner of Presidents Temer and Trump

09/18/2017 - 11h57

When Brazil's President, Michel Temer, sits at the table with Donald Trump, the President of the US, to have dinner in New York on Monday, September 18, the menu could be hard to digest.

The bilateral Brazil-US agenda, which has come to standstill due to the political instability in Brazil and the escalating foreign crises currently worrying Americans, has gained two other points of friction.

Brazil is protesting against the excessively long time the US market has taken to reopen to Brazilian meat exports. And the US government criticizes Brazil's decision to impose a tariff on American ethanol again.

In June, in the wake of the Weak Flesh Operation, which disclosed a series of sanitary problems found in Brazilian slaughterhouses, the US vetoed imports of in natura meat from Brazil. The veto affected a hard-earned victory - Brazil had negotiated for 17 years to enter the US market.

Brazil has been a main exporter of industrialized meat to the US for a long time. However, the importance of opening the US market to in natura meat would represent a signal to other markets.

The American government has signaled that it will react to Brazil's decision to create a fee on imported ethanol and an extra tariff of 20%.

American producers of corn-based ethanol, who export to the Northeast region of Brazil, urged the White House to "act immediately and consider all the possibilities to encourage Brazil" to revoke the tariff. The two countries had eliminated their tariffs on ethanol after a deal made in 2010.

Translated by THOMAS MUELLO

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	Ludovic Marin/AFP
	US President Donald Trump (L) shakes hands with Brazil's President Michel Temer at the beginning of the third working session of the G20 meeting in Hamburg