Brasilia rewrites the tariff fine print on hundreds of machines, chips and truck parts, betting that cheaper imported equipment can keep its reindustrialization drive on track while a 25 percent United States tariff squeezes its exporters from the outside.
BRASILIA, August 10, 2026
Brazil’s foreign trade chamber has pushed through one of the broadest single-week overhauls of its import duty exception lists in recent memory, modifying tariff treatment for roughly 750 capital goods, eliminating import duties on dozens of information technology and telecommunications products, adjusting the special regime for trucks, trailers and semi-trailers, and rewriting duty exemptions for auto parts that have no equivalent produced inside the country.
The package, published in the Diario Oficial da Uniao on August 6, flows from a set of resolutions dated August 4 and adopted by the Executive Management Committee (Gecex) of the Chamber of Foreign Trade (Camex), the interministerial body that sets Brazilian tariff policy. The decisions were deliberated at the committee’s 239th ordinary meeting, held on July 30, according to the Brazilian government. Most of the measures enter into force seven days after publication, meaning the new rates begin applying in the coming days.
Global Trade Alert, the Swiss-based monitor of trade policy interventions, has logged the package across a cluster of intervention records (IDs 158339, 158340, 158351 and 158353 through 158357), classifying the core measures as a modification of import duties on 750 capital goods, the elimination of import duties on 44 IT and telecommunications products, modifications to the ex-tarifario list for trucks, trailers and semi-trailers, and customs duty exemptions on certain auto parts destined for the automotive industry.
Taken together, the measures amount to a recalibration rather than a liberalization. Brazil is cutting duties, often to zero, where domestic industry cannot supply the equipment its factories and farms need, while trimming or revoking exceptions where local production has emerged. It is the signature move of a government trying to reconcile two goals that pull in opposite directions: protecting a manufacturing base it has promised to rebuild, and lowering the cost of the machinery that modernization requires.
A Four-Part Package
The centerpiece of the August 6 publication is Gecex Resolution No. 943 of August 4, 2026, which grants new ex-tarifarios for capital goods and modifies existing ones by amending the single annex of Resolution Gecex/Camex No. 780 of 2025, the consolidated list of capital goods benefiting from the regime. The resolution enters into force seven days after publication, according to Brazilian customs consultancy Efficienza.
Alongside it, Gecex Resolution No. 944 addresses the parallel list for IT and telecommunications goods, known in Brazilian regulatory shorthand as BIT (bens de informatica e telecomunicacoes), by amending the annex of Resolution Gecex No. 781 of 2025. Global Trade Alert’s records describe the IT and telecom component of the week’s actions as eliminating import duties on 44 products. The first annex of Resolution 944 itself lists 21 entirely new ex-tarifarios, while further annexes alter the technical descriptions of items already on the list and modify the validity period of one existing entry, according to Atlas Publico, a Brazilian official-gazette monitoring service.
The new technology entries read like a snapshot of where Brazilian industry and agriculture are trying to go. Among the products that will now enter duty free, per Atlas Publico’s breakdown of Resolution 944, are rigid FR-4 laminates used to fabricate printed circuit boards, desktop digital printing machines for labels, computational boards designed for artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads, 800 gigabit optical transceivers for high-capacity networks, interactive digital whiteboard panels between 50 and 100 inches, controllers for agricultural spraying robots, and ruggedized automatic data processing machines built for use in farm environments. All 21 new IT and telecom ex-tarifarios run through July 30, 2028.
The third element, Gecex Resolution No. 945, grants and alters ex-tarifarios for automotive products classified as capital goods by amending the annex of Resolution Gecex/Camex No. 311 of 2022, the instrument that governs the special list covering trucks, trailers, semi-trailers and related road and agricultural machinery. Global Trade Alert tracks changes to this list as a distinct intervention stream, and it has been amended repeatedly during 2026.
Finally, Gecex Resolution No. 946 modifies the list of auto parts with no equivalent national production that was established under Resolution Gecex/Camex No. 284 of 2021, both altering and revoking individual ex-tarifarios. Under that regime, auto parts absent from Brazilian production lines can be imported at a reduced import tax of 2 percent, subject to prior authorization processed through the Siscomex foreign trade system. The revocations matter as much as the grants: when an item is struck from the list, importers revert to the full common external tariff, a change that can upend sourcing math for vehicle assemblers running just-in-time operations.
The same Gecex session also produced measures outside the ex-tarifario family, including Resolution No. 947, which extends for up to five more years the 21.6 percent antidumping duty on suspension PVC resin imported from China, according to Atlas Publico.
How the Ex-Tarifario Machine Works
The ex-tarifario regime is Brazil’s institutionalized escape valve from the Mercosur Common External Tariff, the CET (TEC in Portuguese) that binds Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay to a shared schedule of import duties. Because the CET applies bloc-wide, Brazil cannot simply rewrite its tariff schedule unilaterally. What it can do, under Mercosur Common Market Council rules and Brazilian Decree No. 11,428, is grant temporary, product-specific exceptions where no equivalent good is produced nationally.
In practice, a Brazilian company that wants to import, say, a specialized weaving machine or an AI accelerator card petitions the Ministry of Development, Industry, Trade and Services (MDIC). The ministry tests the claim of no equivalent national production, consults domestic manufacturers who may object, and sends the case to Gecex for deliberation. If granted, the import duty falls, generally to zero for capital goods and IT products, for a defined validity window. The mechanism is currently regulated by Gecex Resolution No. 512 of 2023, and, as Atlas Publico notes, it is designed to facilitate the technological modernization of Brazil’s productive base and access to advanced technologies not manufactured in the country.
The scale is substantial and the churn is constant. Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) research reported in June that Brazil had added 614 capital goods to the ex-tarifario list and removed 42, while adding 64 IT and telecommunications goods and removing three, with the new inclusions classified under HS Chapters 84, 85, 86, 87 and 90 and validity periods running through September 9, 2026 or April 30, 2028 depending on the product. In the same round, the descriptions of eight capital goods were modified and the validity of 49 capital goods and one IT product was extended through December 31, 2027.
That June action, the July measures and now the August package form a rolling sequence. Resolution 944 is already the sixth amendment to the consolidated BIT list since Resolution 781 of 2025 established it, following Resolutions 824, 895, 902, 914 and 933, according to Atlas Publico. For customs planners, the ex-tarifario list is less a document than a moving target.
A Crowded Summer of Tariff Engineering
The August package landed in what Brazilian trade practitioners describe as an unusually dense stream of Gecex activity. On July 17, Gecex Resolution No. 939 zeroed import duties on 11 product lines, but with quantitative quotas and fixed validity periods attached, so that the zero rate applies only within the quota volume and the standard tariff returns above it. Trade logistics publication Deliver2 noted that quotas under such resolutions are often distributed across quarters or other sub-periods, that unused balances do not carry over, and that demand in the final weeks of a quota period typically exhausts limits faster than importers expect.
July also saw Resolution No. 938 maintain the 12 percent export tax on crude petroleum oils and bituminous minerals, Resolution No. 935 revise validity periods for auto parts ex-tarifarios, and a series of antidumping reviews covering goods from China, Malaysia, Pakistan and Turkey. In late July, Resolution No. 942 converted a set of provisional ex-tarifarios into definitive ones and extended their validity to April 2028, amending the annexes of both the capital goods and IT lists.
The deeper context is a fiscal zigzag that began at the turn of the year. In early 2026 Gecex raised import duties on capital goods, IT and telecom products as part of a revenue and protection push, while preserving temporary reductions for qualifying items. The move drew immediate pushback, and on February 27 the committee partially reversed course with Resolution No. 866, which restored the import tariff on 15 IT products, including smartphones and notebooks, to 16 percent rather than the planned increase to 20 percent, while cutting duties to zero on 105 capital goods and IT items under the ex-tarifario mechanism, according to regulatory tracking service Regfollower. That resolution covered everything from air conditioner compressors and microfans to cotton harvesters, advanced weaving machines, fiber laser welding equipment and AI-assisted ultrasound machines, and it took effect immediately, in what Regfollower characterized as an effort at balancing support for the domestic industry with limits on the impact on consumer prices.
The August package extends that same logic: higher headline tariffs where Brazil wants to defend domestic producers, and a widening lattice of product-specific exceptions where it does not.
Industrial Policy Under Lula
The tariff engineering is inseparable from the industrial strategy of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s government. In January 2024 the administration launched Nova Industria Brasil (New Industry Brazil), a mission-oriented industrial policy running to 2033, with development targets organized around six missions spanning agroindustry, health, infrastructure, digital transformation, bioeconomy and defense. The government announced 300 billion reais in financing for the program through 2026, according to the Planalto presidential office.
Vice President Geraldo Alckmin, who also serves as Minister of Development, Industry, Trade and Services and chairs Camex, framed the program at its launch as a commitment to building a competitive and innovative economy. “The new policy places innovation and sustainability at the center of economic development,” Alckmin said at the time, per the official announcement.
The ex-tarifario regime sits at the operational heart of that agenda. Nova Industria Brasil calls for raising the technological intensity of Brazilian manufacturing, and most of the machinery embodying that technology, from lithography-adjacent electronics to precision agricultural robotics, is not made in Brazil. Every duty-free machine that enters under an ex-tarifario is, in the government’s framing, an input into domestic industrial upgrading rather than a threat to it. At the same time, the removals and revocations in each Gecex round are the enforcement edge of the policy: once a Brazilian manufacturer demonstrates equivalent production, the tariff shield snaps back into place.
Outside reviewers have counseled realism. The Cambridge Industrial Innovation Policy group, in an assessment of the plan, identified both sources of optimism and words of caution about Brazil’s capacity to coordinate the instruments involved. The steady drumbeat of Gecex resolutions suggests the tariff instrument, at least, is being worked hard.
The Washington Backdrop
The August measures arrived three weeks after the sharpest external shock to Brazilian trade policy in years. On July 16, the Office of the United States Trade Representative announced a 25 percent tariff on most Brazilian imports, effective July 22, as the remedy flowing from a Section 301 investigation into Brazilian practices covering digital trade, intellectual property protection, ethanol market access and deforestation-linked competition, among other areas.
“Safeguarding American economic interests against unfair trade practices is the bedrock of President Trump’s America First policies,” U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in the announcement, adding that “extensive negotiations with Brazil over the past year have not resolved these issues, but we remain open to continuing negotiations with Brazil to bring about long-needed changes to the problems identified in this investigation.”
Lula responded within hours, condemning the measure as the product of “active collaboration with the Bolsonaro family,” a reference to the family of former President Jair Bolsonaro, whose prosecution has been a persistent flashpoint between the two governments. “Brazil will immediately initiate the procedures to activate the instruments provided for in the Reciprocity Law, approved unanimously by the National Congress, and will resume the issue within the framework of the World Trade Organization dispute settlement mechanism,” Lula said in a statement, adding that there was “no justification for unilateral measures” and citing what he described as a 424.5 billion dollar cumulative U.S. surplus with Brazil over the past 15 years.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio escalated the rhetoric further, saying “President Lula and his government have not negotiated with the U.S. in good faith” and that “these tariffs are the price” of the Brazilian government’s posture. Coffee, beef and some other agricultural goods were exempted from the U.S. action, according to press reports. The July 2026 tariff follows an earlier 50 percent tariff announced in July 2025, which was subsequently struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, per UPI.
For Brasilia, the juxtaposition is pointed. While Washington raises walls against Brazilian goods, Brazil is selectively lowering its own barriers to the world’s machinery exporters, including American ones. Because ex-tarifario benefits apply on a most-favored-nation basis, U.S. capital equipment manufacturers remain fully eligible for the zero rates in the new resolutions, tariff war notwithstanding. The same is true of German, Italian, Japanese, South Korean and, significantly, Chinese suppliers, who have been expanding their share of Brazilian machinery imports for a decade.
What It Means for the Brazilian Economy
The economic logic of the package is straightforward: Brazil’s investment recovery needs cheaper capital goods. The central bank’s Copom committee cut the benchmark Selic rate from 14.25 percent to 14.00 percent on August 6, its fourth consecutive reduction, but Brazilian real interest rates remain among the highest in the world, and financing costs continue to weigh on equipment purchases. Shaving the import tax on machinery, in many cases from the CET rate to zero, is one of the few investment stimulus levers the government can pull without direct fiscal cost beyond forgone tariff revenue.
The counterweight is the domestic capital goods industry, which has historically opposed broad ex-tarifario grants on the argument that they erode demand for locally built equipment. The regime’s no-equivalent-production test is the negotiated boundary between those interests, and the steady flow of removals, 42 capital goods struck from the list in the June round alone per HKTDC, shows the test has teeth. The February episode, in which Gecex retreated from a planned tariff increase on smartphones and notebooks while simultaneously zeroing duties on 105 industrial items, illustrated how narrow the government’s path is between industrial protection, consumer prices and fiscal need.
For the automotive sector, the truck, trailer and auto parts adjustments carry particular weight. Brazil’s vehicle assemblers depend on the Resolution 284 auto parts list to source components at 2 percent duty, and revisions or revocations can shift landed costs across entire model programs. The parallel changes to the Resolution 311 list affect fleet operators and body builders whose equipment economics turn on whether a given specialized truck or semi-trailer configuration qualifies for relief.
There is also a trade-diversion dimension. With the U.S. market now 25 percent more expensive for most Brazilian exports, Brazilian policymakers have redoubled outreach to alternative markets and suppliers, and the duty relief on inputs and equipment lowers the cost base for exporters trying to stay competitive elsewhere. The Reciprocity Law process Lula has invoked keeps the possibility of Brazilian countermeasures against U.S. goods alive, but nothing in the August package discriminates against American products.
Implications for Global Importers, Exporters and Supply Chains
For foreign equipment manufacturers, the August resolutions are a commercial opening with a deadline attached. The new IT and telecom ex-tarifarios run to July 30, 2028, while other recent grants expire on April 30, 2028, December 31, 2027 or as early as September 9, 2026, depending on the product and the resolution under which they were granted. Suppliers whose products match a listed description can quote Brazilian customers duty-free pricing, but only for the window and only for goods that match the ex description exactly. Brazilian customs applies the descriptions literally: a machine that deviates from the listed technical specification falls back to the full CET rate.
That makes classification discipline the first order of business. Importers need to confirm the NCM code (Brazil’s HS-based nomenclature), verify that the imported model conforms to the published ex text, and track the validity date of each exception. Where relief comes with quotas, as under Resolution 939, the calculus is harder still. Deliver2’s guidance to importers captures the operational reality: confirm the exact code, the quota size and the validity period with a customs broker, and plan purchases early in the quota period, because limits are typically exhausted faster than expected in the closing weeks.
For supply chain managers, three timing features of the Brazilian system deserve attention. First, the seven-day entry-into-force rule means the August measures convert from gazette text to applied rates almost immediately; shipments already on the water may land under a different duty than the one quoted at booking. Second, ex-tarifario status is revocable, and Gecex revokes items in nearly every cycle when domestic production emerges, so multi-year sourcing plans built on a zero rate carry policy risk that should be priced or hedged with contractual tariff-change clauses. Third, the lists are amended roughly monthly; the BIT list alone has been changed six times since its 2025 consolidation, and a product excluded in one cycle can petition back in a later one.
For exporters in the United States, the ex-tarifario channel is one of the few unambiguously positive developments in the bilateral relationship this summer. U.S. machinery, medical device and network equipment makers can still capture Brazilian demand at zero duty where their products appear on the lists, even as their government and Brasilia trade Section 301 actions and WTO filings. For Chinese suppliers, the package extends an already favorable run: much of the AI hardware, optical networking and display equipment covered by Resolution 944 is produced at scale in China, and the antidumping extension on PVC resin in Resolution 947 is a reminder that Brazil distinguishes sharply between welcome capital goods and unwelcome commodity competition.
For multinationals operating plants in Brazil, the message is to work the process. Ex-tarifarios are granted on petition, and the July 30 Gecex meeting that produced this package was processing applications filed months earlier through the MDIC portal. Companies planning 2027 and 2028 capital expenditure in Brazil should be filing now, documenting the absence of national production, and monitoring objections from domestic manufacturers.
What to Watch
Three threads will determine whether August’s retooling reads, in hindsight, as routine maintenance or as a strategic pivot. The first is the U.S. dispute: if Brazil activates Reciprocity Law countermeasures or advances its WTO case, tariff policy could turn defensive quickly, and the ex-tarifario lists could become bargaining material. The second is the domestic industry response, which will surface in the objection files of future Gecex meetings and in how many items are revoked in the next rounds. The third is investment data: the regime’s justification is ultimately that cheaper machines become Brazilian factories, and Nova Industria Brasil’s 2033 targets will be measured against capital formation, not gazette pages.
For now, the direction is clear. Brazil is neither opening its economy nor closing it. It is retooling it, one tariff line at a time.