Trade Audit — Brazil

Brazil runs one of the world's largest commodity trade surpluses — but it is shrinking, not setting records. The 2025 surplus was $68.3 billion on the official Secex/MDIC basis ($59.7 billion on the World Bank balance-of-payments basis), the third-largest on record, down for a second consecutive year from the 2023 peak of $98.9 billion. The surplus rests on three commodities — crude oil, soybeans and iron ore — that together account for roughly a third of exports and are sold heavily to China. Oil is now the #1 export product for a second year, but by only about $1 billion. Meanwhile the 2021-23 manufacturing recovery has faded, and with R&D spending flat for two decades, the oil windfall is more likely to deepen commodity dependence than to fund reindustrialisation.