President Lula departs for G7 summit in France, raising expectations for breakthrough on U.S. tariffs and EU meat ban

Early on Sunday, 14 June 2026, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva boarded the presidential aircraft in Brasília bound for Évian-les-Bains, where he will attend the annual G7 summit as a special invitee of French President Emmanuel Macron. Although Brazil is not a member of the group, Brasília has used past invitations to insert mobility-related issues—such as travel facilitation, reciprocal visa waivers and trusted-traveller programmes—into the wider trade and climate agenda.

This year, the diplomatic stakes are higher than usual. Only two weeks ago the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) proposed a 25 % tariff on a range of Brazilian exports, citing alleged “unfair practices” that include the domestic instant-payment system PIX. For Brazilian companies, the surcharge threatens profit margins and may push executives to relocate parts of their supply chains. A face-to-face meeting between Lula and U.S. President Donald Trump has not been confirmed, but Itamaraty officials say any corridor conversation will focus on defusing the tariff threat and restarting talks on a trusted-traveller lane that would speed up entry procedures for pre-vetted Brazilian business travellers at U.S. airports.

For travellers and global HR teams trying to stay ahead of these shifting entry rules, VisaHQ can smooth the process. Through its dedicated Brazil page (https://www.visahq.com/brazil/), the platform delivers real-time visa requirements, application support and passport services—helping businesses keep mobile staff compliant while governments debate tariffs, waivers and new trusted-traveller schemes.



Europe is the other immediate concern. On 5 June, the European Union published an official notice excluding Brazil from its authorised list of suppliers of beef, poultry offal, fish and honey—an abrupt decision that stunned exporters after the Mercosur-EU trade agreement’s provisional entry into force. Agro-multinationals fear a repeat of the 2018 sanitary ban that paralysed shipments for months and forced thousands of reassignment-dependent expatriate workers to return home. Lula’s advisers are quietly lobbying for a side-meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to seek either an extension or a phased transition that would avoid immediate plant closures.

Beyond bilateral show-downs, mobility will surface in three formal G7 sessions that Lula is due to address. On 16 June he will speak on development finance, where Brasília plans to propose a G7-backed multilateral guarantee scheme that would underwrite infrastructure along South America’s emerging bio-oceanic corridor and streamline cross-border work-permit recognition. On 17 June the Brazilian delegation will join a leaders’ working lunch on artificial intelligence; government sources say Lula will push for a collective code of conduct on the use of AI in immigration decision-making, aiming to prevent discriminatory algorithms at border checkpoints.

For corporate mobility managers the summit matters on several levels: a détente with Washington could prevent retaliatory visa fees that have been mooted in Congress, while any timeline for lifting the EU meat embargo will dictate whether hundreds of posted workers remain in Germany, France and Spain or are recalled. Further, Brazil’s advocacy for AI guardrails may shape the compliance environment for companies using automated document-verification tools when moving staff abroad.