Donald Trump's trade war unites Brazil's Lula and PM Modi in hunt for new markets

Two of the emerging-market giants hardest hit by President Donald Trump’s trade wars are deepening their ties in response, betting that a united front will help them endure the US broadsides and find new markets to skirt tariffs.

Government officials and business executives from Brazil and India are converging this week in New Delhi, seeking to forge new relationships and triple the countries’ $12 billion trade partnership as economists warn that Trump’s policies could shave about one percentage point from the countries’ economic growth. The Brazilian delegation is likely to discuss potential partnerships with Indian business leaders in areas including agribusiness, biofuels and defense.

The burgeoning partnership between Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and India’s Narendra Modi is among the clearest examples of the global realignments taking place as the White House tears up decades-old partnerships and practices of commerce. That reboot in American diplomacy has also pushed New Delhi to thaw relations with China, and gave impetus to the South American bloc Mercosur and the European Union to ink a long-elusive trade deal.

While both Modi and Lula are maneuvering to improve their standing in Washington, they’re also effectively hedging their economic bets to cope with being squeezed by Trump.

“Trump’s trade war is generating a total reorganization of trade everywhere,” said Thiago de Aragao, head of Arko International, a consultancy in Washington. “Although everyone wants to solve the problems they have with the US, everyone is weary that this mindset from the Trump administration might be a long-term trend.”

India and Brazil were hit by some of the harshest tariffs since the Trump administration came to power — 50% on their goods. While the White House later issued carve outs for hundreds of Brazilian products and exempted Indian pharmaceutical and electronics, the levies pose a serious economic risk.

About 12% of Brazil’s exports went to the US last year, so the South American country has much to lose if tariffs curtail demand for key goods like beef and steel. Vice President Geraldo Alckmin will lead the Brazilian delegation in India, which will also include executives from oil giant Petrobras, the mining company Vale SA and food processor BRF SA.

The delegation is particularly interested in tapping into coffee and ethanol markets, according to a Brazilian government official involved in the trip’s preparations who asked not to be identified discussing private internal deliberations. The two countries will also discuss expanding the Mercosur–India preferential trade agreement, signed in 2004.

Lula, 79, had already been looking to diversify Brazil’s trading partners when he started his term in 2023 — targeting Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey, among others — but he has doubled down on that effort since Trump came to power promising to shrink the US trade gap. 

In August, the US slapped levies on Latin America’s largest economy in response to the prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally who was convicted of attempting a coup last month. 

Washington and Brasilia have since taken steps to repair relations following an impromptu face-to-face between the two presidents at the United Nations General Assembly in September. But the 50% import taxes remain in place.

Brazil has rerouted some of its US exports to Argentina and China over the past few months. India, Brazilian officials say, is the destination that holds the most potential growth. Both India and Brazil are founding members and de facto leaders of the BRICS, the bloc of emerging world powers that Trump loathes.

“Perhaps the biggest increase in trade flows we’ll see, regardless of the tariff hike, but also because of it, will be with India,” Jorge Viana, head of the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency, or Apex Brasil, said in an interview.

India is even more dependent on its trade relationship with the US, the Asian nation’s top export destination. Nearly a fifth of all Indian exports are shipped to the US, led by electronics, jewelry and pharmaceuticals.

Modi has tried to strike a balance between staying loyal to developing-world allies and cozying up to Trump. So much so that the 75-year-old prime minister was initially reluctant to attend the annual Brics summit that Brazil hosted in July, fearing harm to US-India relations, according to people familiar with his thinking.

But Trump had exasperated Modi with claims that he had “solved” the latest military escalation between India and Pakistan, an idea the Indian leader squarely rejected. Meanwhile, the Brazilians rolled out the red carpet for Modi at the Brics meeting in Rio de Janeiro, followed by a lavish state luncheon at the presidential palace.

Ultimately, Lula’s entreaties proved persuasive and Modi cast his lot with Brazil, blasting the “double standards” their countries faced from the West.

The White House hit India with two rounds of 25% levies shortly after Modi’s Rio visit over the Asian nation’s continued purchase of Russian fuel, which the US says is funding Vladimir Putin’s war machine.

There’s been a notable cooling in tensions since the tariffs were imposed, with Modi and Trump holding two calls in recent weeks and calling each other “friend,” and US and Indian trade negotiators resuming talks.

Brazil and India have previously banded together to confront Washington. In the early 2000s, the countries successfully partnered with other emerging-market allies against Western powers during World Trade Organization negotiations known as the Doha Round. Developing nations resisted demands to liberalize trade, which scuttled the talks and helped foster their own domestic industries.

Still, regardless of how much Lula and Modi want to improve their trade ties, they are unlikely to wean themselves off the US. Part of the challenge is that they sell many of same products abroad, such as coffee and sugar. Then there is their mutual reliance on China, which is Brazil’s top trade partner and India’s No. 2. 

“Washington provides markets for Brazil and India that they cannot provide for one another,” said Matias Spektor, an international relations professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo. Changing patterns of trade and the structure for value chains is “not something governments can do by fiat,” he said.