On July 22, a 25% Section 301 tariff takes effect on goods of Brazil, the successor to the tariff regime struck down by the Supreme Court earlier this year. Most coverage has focused on the exemption list, which spares coffee, beef, and civil aircraft. Vizion booking data tells a different story: the container trade already restructured itself over the past twelve months, and the cargo still moving is the cargo this tariff hits.

Three regimes in twelve months

Brazil to US weekly booked TEU traces every policy turn since January 2025. Volumes averaged roughly 9,000 TEU per week before tariffs arrived. When the 50% regime took effect in August 2025, weekly bookings fell about 35% and stayed suppressed for six months. The week the courts invalidated that regime and a 10% interim duty took its place, bookings nearly tripled, hitting 15,959 TEU, the highest week in the dataset. Volumes have held near or above the pre-tariff baseline since.

The most recent weeks show bookings easing as the window to beat the new tariff closed. With typical Brazil to US East Coast transits of 20 to 30 days, cargo booked after mid-June arrives after July 22 regardless of timing. Recent volume reflects demand that is booking into the tariff, either because the cargo is exempt or because shippers have accepted 25% as the operating reality.

One category still growing

Comparing January through July bookings year over year, total volume fell about 8%: 249,632 TEU in 2025 against 228,821 TEU in 2026. The composition tells the real story. Classifying every booking against the annexes of the USTR final action, volume that faces the new 25% duty fell 18% year over year. Volume covered by Section 232 actions instead, which the 301 action carves out, fell 20%. Exempt volume grew 17%, the only category that did.

The 2025 tariff round did the sorting. Ceramic tiles fell 49%, uncoated paper 66%, refined sugar 61%, MDF 55%, and wood doors 43% over the twelve months, while exempt lanes such as frozen beef held flat and green coffee remained among the largest commodities on the water. Worked stone under the exempt classification grew 51% even as its tariffed granite neighbor fell 17%, a split that turns on a single HS digit. Ethanol, a named grievance in the underlying investigation, moved roughly 330 TEU in the first seven months of 2026, down more than half from an already collapsed 2025.

The result: roughly 44% of the containers moving on this lane today face the 25% duty when it takes effect, concentrated in plywood, granite, dissolving pulp, paper, and tires. That share was 49% a year ago. The lane did not get safer. The exposed cargo left.

Where the exposed volume rides

Maersk and MSC together carry about 71% of Brazil to US booked TEU, a share that has held steady across both years even as the two diverged: Maersk grew 4% year over year while MSC declined 8%, turning a dead heat into an 11,000 TEU gap. CMA CGM grew 20% into the lane over the same period, and ONE reduced its presence to under 900 TEU.

A note on depth: booking volumes at this level show which carriers hold the most tariff-exposed TEU in absolute terms. TradeView resolves the layer beneath, carrier by commodity, showing how much of each carrier's Brazil book sits in tariffed lines versus exempt cargo such as reefer beef.

What to watch after July 22

The next four to six weeks of booking data will answer the open question: does the tariffed remainder take a second step down, or has a year of tariffs already found the floor of price-insensitive demand? The commodity split will tell. Exempt lanes have no reason to slow. If plywood, granite, and paper bookings hold anyway, that is a signal importers have priced in the duty. Brazil's October general elections add a political clock to any negotiated outcome.

Booking data shows these shifts weeks before vessels arrive and months before customs statistics publish. That lead time is the difference between reacting to a tariff and planning around one.

See the Brazil lane at full resolution

Everything in this post comes from Vizion TradeView booking data, aggregated for publication. TradeView subscribers can cut the same dataset by commodity, carrier, shipper, and port pair, updated as bookings post and weeks ahead of vessel arrival. To see your exposure on the Brazil lane, or any lane, at that resolution, request a TradeView demo below.