Trade between Brazil and China hit a record US$171 billion in 2025, more than double Brazil’s total with the United States last year, as Chinese demand for Brazilian oil, farm goods and minerals surged and US tariffs on Brazilian exports nudged Brasilia to deepen ties with Beijing.
Washington imposed a sweeping 50 per cent tariff on a broad range of Brazilian products, citing political grievances linked to the prosecution of former president Jair Bolsonaro.
As Brazilian officials scrambled to protect key export sectors, China helped to soften the US blow by repeatedly signalling that it was ready to absorb more Brazilian goods, from coffee and oil to aircraft and industrial inputs.
The latest figures, released by the China-Brazil Business Council on Wednesday, showed that trade between the two countries had reached a scale unmatched by any other Brazilian partnership, highlighting how geopolitical shocks were accelerating a long-term reorientation of Brazil’s external commerce.
According to the council’s full 2025 report, total trade volume between Brazil and China rose 8.2 per cent year on year to more than double the US$83 billion Brazil reported with its second-largest partner, the United States.
Brazil recorded a US$29.1 billion trade surplus with China, accounting for 43 per cent of the country’s US$68.3 billion global surplus, extending a 17-year streak of positive balances with Beijing.
China also consolidated its position as Brazil’s most important market on both sides of the ledger. It absorbed 28.7 per cent of all Brazilian exports in 2025 and supplied 25.3 per cent of Brazil’s imports.
Brazilian shipments to China grew 6 per cent to US$100 billion, the second-highest value ever recorded, while imports from China climbed 11.5 per cent to a record US$70.9 billion, boosted by a surge in high-value industrial purchases.
Much of the export growth was driven by commodities and energy. China took 51.5 per cent of Brazil’s extractive industry exports and 47 per cent of its agricultural shipments, the report showed.
Oil dominated the flows, with China buying 44 million tonnes, or US$20 billion, of Brazilian crude exports. Those sales accounted for 45 per cent of all Brazilian oil exports and were 4½ times more than the United States.
Coffee exports also rose, with shipments of unroasted beans to China more than doubling in value to US$459 million, as the country climbed to become Brazil’s second-largest coffee market in Asia.
On the import side, China was Brazil’s biggest supplier of manufactured goods, with a 27 per cent share, well ahead of the United States and Germany.
Business council research director Tulio Cariello said the headline figures captured more than just cyclical shifts in demand.
He said the scale and composition of trade with China reflected how Brazilian exporters and importers had been adjusting to a world in which geopolitics was increasingly shaping market access rather than prices alone.
“Brazilian companies were not simply following where demand was growing fastest,” Cariello said.
“They were also reacting to where access was becoming more secure, and in 2025 that increasingly meant China rather than the United States.”
Cariello added that the structure of trade with Beijing made it easier for Brazil to redirect volumes in moments of stress.
He noted that China’s appetite for bulk commodities, energy and food gave Brazilian producers an outlet when Western markets became less predictable, while Chinese manufacturers were filling gaps left by more expensive or restricted US and European suppliers.
That shift accelerated after US President Donald Trump announced in July that Brazilian exports would face a blanket 50 per cent tariff, a move he linked to what he called political persecution of Bolsonaro.
The measure was widely seen in Brasilia as overtly political, particularly since Washington had long run large trade surpluses with Brazil, including US$28.6 billion in 2024 alone.
Beijing moved quickly to position itself as a stabilising partner, helping to mitigate the hit to Brazilian trade and geopolitical priorities.
In late July, China’s foreign ministry said it was willing to strengthen cooperation with Brazil and other Brics countries to defend “fairness” in global trade, explicitly citing interest in aviation, a crucial sector for Brazilian manufacturer Embraer. Chinese officials also criticised the US for using tariffs as political leverage.
Days later, China gave approval for nearly 200 Brazilian companies to export coffee to its market, a highly unusual move that came just as the US tariff on Brazilian coffee was about to take effect.
The decision gave Brazilian exporters access to a fast-growing consumer market at a moment when shipments to the United States, the world’s largest coffee importer, were suddenly under threat.
And in August, Chinese President Xi Jinping reinforced that message in a phone call with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, telling him that China supported Brazil in defending its legitimate rights and that countries should unite against unilateralism and protectionism.
The two leaders agreed to deepen cooperation across energy, health, digital industries and climate policy, even as Washington extended a tariff pause to Beijing but not to Brasília.
The business council’s data suggests those diplomatic moves had real commercial consequences.
Taken together, the numbers point to a structural shift in Brazil’s external trade, with China consolidating its position as both the country’s main buyer and its main source of industrial inputs at a time when access to the US market has become more uncertain.
For Cariello, that uncertainty is already forcing companies to rethink their strategies.
“There’s no way to escape the geopolitical context,” he said, arguing that Brazil’s growing commercial ties with China reflected the need to adapt to a world in which political decisions were increasingly reshaping global trade routes. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
