The duty starts July 22, and the USTR's grievance is Pix's free-access rule and the ceiling on merchant fees.

From July 22 the United States will apply a 25% duty to most goods shipped from Brazil, the first levy issued under the Section 301 route the Trump administration returned to after the Supreme Court struck down its earlier import tariffs.

It is also the first time that power — normally reached for over stolen intellectual property, subsidies and market access — has been aimed at a payment network a government runs at home. Ambassador Jamieson Greer, the US Trade Representative, said the action was necessary to address unfair trade practices so that American workers and companies could compete on a level playing field.

The USTR's case is that Pix disadvantages US payment firms, Visa and Mastercard among them. It points to a rule obliging any financial institution with more than 500,000 active accounts to offer Pix to consumers at no cost, which it argues steers people away from rival options, and to the ceiling Brazil's monetary authority sets on what those institutions may charge merchants for Pix payments. Neither Visa nor Mastercard publicly breaks out its market share or revenue in Brazil.

Pix, the instant-payment platform operated by the Brazilian state, reaches more than 90% of the country's adults and now handles more transactions than credit and debit cards combined: 42.9 billion in the second half of 2025, against 23.8 billion for credit, debit and prepaid cards together. On a separate monthly measure, central bank figures put June at close to 7 billion payments worth roughly R$3 trillion ($590 billion).

Washington, for its part, treats Brazil's move toward payment rails that bypass the dollar — Pix and the growth of stablecoins alike — as a potential danger to trade settled in dollars. Tax authority figures indicate dollar-pegged tokens already account for close to 90% of Brazil's crypto transaction activity, mostly for payments and settlement, and appetite for the dollar across the country's digital economy shows no sign of falling.

Rodrigo Caggiano, founder of the Brazilian asset-monitoring platform RWA Monitor, told CoinDesk that Pix and stablecoins are in practice complementary rather than rivals, since Pix has covered domestic instant payments effectively while stablecoins extend what blockchain networks can do. He expects the US pressure to speed up Brazil's policy debate, arriving as the central bank develops Drex, its own tokenized-settlement platform, on comparable programmable infrastructure.

In the Atlantic Council's reading, the dispute could set a benchmark for later trade fights over states that build their own payment systems, reaching past Brazil to India's Unified Payments Interface and the digital euro the European Central Bank intends to create.

Brazil's monetary authority has moved to curb the role dollar stablecoins play in regulated cross-border payments. From October 1, Resolution 561 will bar payment firms from clearing cross-border payments with stablecoins or other crypto, closing a channel that had been sending reais through dollar tokens.