INTRODUCTION Contributed by: Domicio dos Santos Neto and Frederico Favacho, Santos Neto Advogados
After public hearings in September 2025 and formal consultations in April 2026, the USTR issued a deter- mination on 1 June 2026, finding that several Brazilian practices are unreasonable and burden US commerce, and proposing a 25% additional duty on Brazilian-ori- gin goods, with a statutory deadline of 15 July 2026 for responsive action. The proposed measure is in addi- tion to a pre-existing 10% baseline tariff applied under Section 122 since February 2026. While many key agricultural export categories – including beef, coffee, orange juice, soybeans, corn and cocoa – appear in the proposed exemption annex, products such as fish, ethanol and a range of processed food items remain exposed, and the overall uncertainty creates significant risk premiums for exporters and their trading partners. The EU–Mercosul front presents an equally paradoxi- cal picture. The EU–Mercosul Partnership Agreement was signed on 17 January 2026 after more than two decades of negotiations, and provisionally entered into force on 1 May 2026, creating the world’s largest trading zone by population at approximately 700 mil- lion people and triggering tariff reductions across a broad range of goods. However, just two weeks after the agreement took effect, the European Commission voted unanimously to remove Brazil from the list of third countries authorised to export animal products to the EU – a decision taking effect on 3 September 2026, and covering beef, poultry meat, eggs, aqua- culture products, honey and casings. Brazil is the only Mercosur country affected; Argen- tina, Paraguay and Uruguay retain their authorised status. The stated ground is Brazil’s failure to demon- strate compliance with EU requirements on antimicro- bial use throughout the full lifetime of the animals from which exported products originate – requirements that apply uniformly to all third-country suppliers regard- less of their bilateral trade commitments. Brazil cur- rently lacks a nationwide individual animal traceability system capable of verifying this requirement, with a fully operational system unlikely before 2032. The case illustrates a dynamic that recurs across multiple regulatory frameworks: trade agreements open tariff gates while regulatory standards – on food safety, sustainability and labour – provide alternative mechanisms through which the same markets can be
effectively closed. The EU’s Regulation on Deforesta- tion-Free Products (EUDR) exemplifies this dynamic at a broader, multi-commodity level. Twice delayed (with mandatory compliance now set for 30 December 2026 for large and medium operators, and 30 June 2027 for micro and small operators), the EUDR requires export- ers of cattle, cocoa, coffee, soy, palm oil, rubber and timber to demonstrate that their products were not produced on deforested land after 31 December 2020. The regulation applies globally to all suppliers to the EU market, affecting producers in Latin America, Southeast Asia and Africa alike. Its benchmarking system, which classifies countries by deforestation risk, creates reputational and market access conse- quences that extend beyond the formal compliance requirements, and the compliance burden falls dis- proportionately on smallholder producers across all affected geographies. Alongside these challenges, however, the same period has seen meaningful advances in trade inte- gration. The EFTA–Mercosul Free Trade Agreement, concluded in July 2025 and signed in Rio de Janeiro in September 2025, creates a combined market of approximately 290 million people, eliminates or reduc- es tariffs on nearly 99% of trade value, and opens new channels across agriculture, services and investment. The Mercosul–Singapore Free Trade Agreement (the bloc’s first with a Southeast Asian economy) entered into force for Paraguay and Singapore on 1 February 2026, and for Uruguay on 1 March 2026, opening a gateway to the Asia-Pacific region across a bilateral goods trade of USD11.9 billion. These agreements, alongside the EU–Mercosul deal, reflect a world in which trade integration is expanding its geographic scope – but in which the benefits of that integration are being conditioned, contested and sometimes immediately offset by unilateral regulatory or tariff action from the very same partners. China’s pivot toward protein self-sufficiency and its consequences for global soybean markets Perhaps the most structurally significant demand-side development reshaping global agricultural trade over the medium term is China’s sustained and accelerat- ing effort to reduce its dependence on imported soy-
8 A GRICULTURA L LAW 20 26
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