The United States and Brazil have agreed to steps aimed at lowering barriers to agricultural trade, focusing on wheat, pork and beef, the presidents of the two nations said in a joint statement on Tuesday.
United States Treasury Department announced new sanctions on Venezuelan state-run ferrous metals mining Company, Minerven, and its President, Adrián Antonio Perdomo on Tuesday for promoting “illicit” gold operations that have continued to prop up the regime of President Nicolas Maduro.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, on his first official visit to Washington, declared himself an unabashed admirer of the United States and said he was seeking a new era of close relations after what he called decades of anti-American leaders.
The Brazilian government on Monday waived visa requirements for visitors from the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan, a measure to boost tourism that was first temporarily adopted before the Rio Olympics in 2016.
Representatives of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido have taken control of three of the country's diplomatic properties in the United States, Guaido's US envoy said on Monday, as the opposition presses its bid to oust President Nicolas Maduro.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro arrived in Washington on Sunday to meet with his U.S. counterpart, Donald Trump, and cement a conservative-populist alliance that, in part, aims to ramp up pressure on Venezuela.
U.S. border agents have seized around 1 million pounds of pork from China, a spokesman for the agency said on Friday, over suspicions that it might contain African swine flu disease which has hit Chinese pork output. Federal agents have seized the supplies over the past week in New York.
Brazil is considering granting an import quota of 750,000 metric tons of U.S. wheat per year without tariffs in exchange for other trade concessions, according to Brazilian officials. That is about 10% of Brazilian annual wheat imports and is part of a two-decade-old commitment to import 750,000 metric tons of wheat a year free of tariffs that Brazil made — but never kept — during the World Trade Organization's Uruguay Round of talks on agriculture.
Donald Trump signed the first veto of his presidency on Friday, overriding congressional opposition to secure emergency funds to build more walls on the US-Mexico border. Trump declared in the Oval Office that he was proud to sign the veto.
The United States will strengthen military ties with Brazil to a level usually reserved for NATO allies during President Jair Bolsonaro's visit to Washington next week, boosting growing cooperation between the Americas' two largest militaries, Brazilian government officials said on Thursday.