A New Jersey-based orange juice manufacturer has announced that it is suing Donald Trump’s administration over the president’s threatened 50 percent tariffs on Brazil, a country whose citrus exports it depends on.
Johanna Foods warns that Trump’s blanket levy, due to take effect on August 1, could result in a $70 million hit to its business, leading to likely layoffs and a 25 percent increase in the price of orange juice on supermarket shelves.
The company said that it and its subsidiary, Johanna Beverage Company, supply nearly three-quarters of private-label, not-from-concentrate orange juice consumed in the United States.
They supply a number of major mass grocery retailers, including Aldi, Walmart, Sam’s Club, Wegman’s, Safeway, and Albertsons.
Trump’s tariff would represent a particular blow because, by the Department of Agriculture’s own estimate, Brazil supplies more than half of the orange juice on shelves in American stores, and 80 percent of the global total.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai told The Independent: “The administration is legally and fairly using tariff powers that have been granted to the executive branch by the Constitution and Congress to level the playing field for American workers and safeguard our national security.”
Johanna argues in its lawsuit that Trump’s threat against Brazil, revealed in a letter sent to the country’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on July 9, was not a formal executive order and did not provide any legal basis for the action.
The president followed up his letter by alleging on Truth Social that President Lula had engaged in a “Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!” after charges were brought against his right-wing predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, a friend of the American who has been nicknamed the “Trump of the Tropics” and who has been accused of plotting a coup.
Lula responded angrily on X with a vow to reciprocate with tariffs of his own on American imports, writing: “Brazil is a sovereign nation with independent institutions and will not accept any form of tutelage.
“Any measure to increase tariffs unilaterally will be responded to in light of Brazil’s Law of Economic Reciprocity.”
Trump’s economic adviser, Kevin Hassett,struggled to explain the tariffs in an interview with Jonathan Karl on ABC News earlier this month, saying: “The bottom line is the president has been very frustrated with negotiations with Brazil and also with the actions of Brazil. In the end, though, you know, we’re trying to put America first.”
Karl argued that the Bolsonaro case before the Brazilian Supreme Court was irrelevant to the U.S. national interest and left the adviser floundering by asking: “On what authority does the president have to impose tariffs on a country because he doesn’t like what that country’s judicial system is handling a specific case?”
Even before the tariffs have been enacted, Trump’s threats have had an adverse impact on the South American nation’s citrus belt, where orange prices have already dropped to $8 a box, about half of what they were in July 2024, according to the University of Sao Paulo’s Cepea index.
“You are not going to spend money to harvest and not have anyone to sell to,” dismayed Minas Gerais farmer Fabricio Vidal told Reuters.
