Brazil denies report of potential tax on US tech firms after Trump steel tariffs

Brazil’s finance minister rejected on Monday a report saying the country was planning to impose taxes on US tech companies if President Donald Trump proceeds with plans to introduce a 25% tariff on all US steel imports.

“The information is not correct,” Fernando Haddad wrote on social media, after the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s administration was mulling tariffs on big tech firms as retaliation.

The South American country is one of the largest sources of US steel imports as well as a top market for many big tech companies.

Trump said on Sunday he would introduce on Monday new 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, on top of existing metals duties, in another escalation of his trade policy shakeup.

“The Brazilian government has made the sensible decision to only make statements at the appropriate time and based on concrete decisions, not on announcements that could be misinterpreted or revised,” Haddad said.

According to the Folha report, which cited an unnamed Brazilian authority, a potential Brazilian levy could have affected Amazon, Meta Platforms’ Facebook and Instagram, and Alphabet-owned Google.

A finance ministry official in 2024 had already floated the idea of a potential tax on big tech companies to meet fiscal targets in case there was a government revenue shortfall this year.

(By Gabriel Araujo, Bernardo Caram, Lisandra Paraguassu and Marcela Ayres; Editing by Louise Heavens, Bernadette Baum, Andrea Ricci and Rod Nickel)