The headline is a round number: a 25 percent tariff on Brazil, effective just after midnight tonight. The schedule underneath it is not round at all, and it is where the story lives.
Of the $39.6 billion the United States imported from Brazil in 2024, only $8.5 billion of it will actually pay the full 25 percent rate [1]. A much larger slice - $20.1 billion - is exempted outright, and the exemptions lead with the two things an American household would notice first: crude oil and coffee [1]. Another $7.3 billion falls under separate Section 232 duties, $3.2 billion is aircraft taxed at an effective 2.5 percent, and $0.3 billion is pharmaceuticals at 12.5 percent [1].
Add it up and the new tariff raises annual duties from about $4.6 billion to $5.7 billion - roughly $1.1 billion in new money, and it lands on industrial inputs, not the grocery aisle [1]. In the days before the deadline, twelve product groups worth $2.4 billion were newly exempted, led by pig iron at about $1.5 billion; a single category, dissolving woodpulp, moved the other way, losing its exemption for the full 25 percent [1].
One wrinkle of timing: for a few days after midnight, the 25 percent stacks on top of the Section 122 surcharge that is itself expiring, so the effective rate briefly runs higher before settling [1]. It is the kind of detail that never survives into a headline - and neither does the exemption list, which is the part that actually answers the question a shopper would ask. The 25 percent is real; so is the fact that your coffee is not paying it [1].
