Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, who is President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's principal rival ahead of Brazil's October presidential vote, has proposed a legal barrier preventing Pix - Brazil's widely used instant payment system - from interconnecting with non-Western cross-border settlement arrangements.
Bolsonaro made the proposal to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) on Wednesday in response to a public consultation the USTR launched after listing Pix among practices it was investigating as potentially unfair trade barriers. That USTR probe concluded in a proposal to impose 25% tariffs on a range of Brazilian goods, with a decision on the tariffs expected this month.
In written comments submitted to the USTR, Bolsonaro argued that applying tariffs would not address the underlying technical structure of Pix and would harm U.S. investment interests. He suggested that the most effective means to reassure Washington would be domestic legislation that guarantees Pix will not be interconnected with non-Western cross-border settlement systems - a move he described as a "decisive signal" to the United States.
Bolsonaro also defended Pix against critiques that Brazil's central bank both owns and operates the system. He portrayed tariffs as the wrong remedy because, in his view, they do not confront Pix's architecture and they would penalize U.S. commercial ties with Brazil.
The senator urged Washington to refrain from imposing the proposed tariffs on Brazilian exports, and contended that the trade dispute has had the political effect of boosting Lula's popularity.
President Lula, who has long promoted reducing reliance on the U.S. dollar in international commerce and strengthening financial ties among developing economies, responded publicly to Bolsonaro's proposal on the social network X. He characterized the plan as an attempt to "hand Pix over to foreign interests," and added: "They wont succeed. Pix is a Brazilian achievement and we will not give it up," he wrote.
The dispute centers in part on the potential implications should Pix become linked to foreign payment rails. If connected to overseas settlement systems, critics say, Pix could theoretically lessen dependence on the U.S. dollar and route transactions around intermediaries such as credit card companies, which currently handle a substantial share of cross-border payments. Those developments are at odds with the policy preferences cited by the U.S. administration of President Donald Trump.
Pix was introduced in late 2020 during the administration of former President Jair Bolsonaro. Since its launch, it has rapidly gained adoption across Brazil, becoming the country's most frequently used payment method and overtaking credit and debit cards while sharply reducing cash usage.
Bolsonaro's written submission to the USTR and his public outreach represent an attempt to reframe the dispute over Pix away from trade sanctions and toward domestic legal guarantees on how the system may be connected internationally. The USTR's consultation and the pending tariff decision set the timeline for whether that approach will influence Washington's next steps.