Oil exports jump 70% as Brazil’s trade surplus widens

Export volumes of the commodity increased, which analysts say partly reflects the impact of the war in the Middle East, as previously contracted shipments were brought forward.

Among Brazil’s main destinations, exports rose to China and the European Union. They fell, however, to Argentina and the United States, two traditional markets for Brazilian manufactured goods. In the U.S. case, the decline is also tied to the effects of President Donald Trump’s tariff policy.

Brazil ended March 2026 with a trade surplus of $6.4 billion, with exports of $31.6 billion and imports of $25.2 billion, data from the Foreign Trade Secretariat at the Ministry of Development, Industry, Trade and Services showed. In the first quarter, the surplus reached $14.2 billion, with exports of $82.3 billion and imports of $68.2 billion, up 7.1% and 1.3%, respectively, from the same period in 2025.

Total Brazilian exports last month were $2.88 billion higher than in March 2025, a 10% increase. Oil shipments rose at a much faster pace, up 70.4%, driven mainly by a 75.9% increase in volume.

Average export prices fell 3.1%, even though international oil prices rose during the month after the outbreak of the war in the Middle East. Oil export revenue totaled $4.77 billion in March, up from $2.8 billion in the same month of 2025, an increase of $1.97 billion.

With that performance, oil’s share of Brazil’s export revenue rose to 15.1% from 9.7% a year earlier. Even so, soybeans remained Brazil’s top export item in the month, totaling $5.92 billion, up 4.3% from March 2025 and accounting for 18.7% of total export revenue.

“The conflict in the Middle East left a direct mark on the March numbers, and that shows up on the export side,” said Ariane Benedito, chief economist at digital bank PicPay. “Brazil took advantage of a window of stronger demand from oil-importing countries seeking to diversify supply amid instability in the Strait of Hormuz, but the contracts that had already been signed still did not fully reflect the geopolitical risk premium.”

The net effect of oil on the month’s trade balance was positive by $1.85 billion, Benedito noted. Without that impact, she said, the March surplus would have been just $4.55 billion. “That shows how nonrecurring the March result was and how dependent it was on a specific external factor: the redirection of oil cargoes during a short-term window shaped by geopolitics.”

China demand

Government data show that China accounted for $1.6 billion of the $1.9 billion increase in Brazil’s crude oil exports in March. Shipments to China totaled $3.1 billion last month, or 64.6% of all Brazilian crude oil exports, a jump of 111.2%. The United States was the second-largest market, with a 6.8% share.

Looking at export destinations more broadly, André Valério, chief economist at Inter, pointed to higher overall shipment values to China and the European Union, up 17.8% and 7.3%, respectively.

Exports to the United States and Argentina, however, fell 9.1% and 5.9%, respectively, from March 2025. Even before the war, he noted, the expectation was that trade flows with the U.S. would not recover immediately, even after the rollback of the so-called “tariff hike,” which had imposed tariffs of as much as 50% on Brazilian products under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the U.S. economic emergency law.

“When a [trade] network is disrupted, it does not come back together so easily. This weakening was already expected,” he said.

José Augusto de Castro, president of the Brazilian Foreign Trade Association, said the data show how Brazil has become increasingly dependent on the Chinese market, which already takes most of the country’s soybean and iron ore exports.

In his view, despite the uncertainty surrounding the war in the Middle East, Brazilian oil exports are likely to become even more concentrated in China under the current geopolitical backdrop, given the volume that the Asian giant is able to absorb.

Lucas Barbosa, an economist at asset manager AZ Quest, noted that Brazil had already been posting strong growth in oil production over the past year. “There is a scenario in which the trade balance for oil and petroleum products could top $50 billion this year. And oil above $100 a barrel should support the trade balance and economic activity in the short term. Unfortunately, on the inflation side, because we import part of our fuel products, we are not fully insulated from the shock.”

Imports also accelerate

Exports, said Valério of Inter, should get a boost in 2026 from oil as a consequence of the war, and that effect should be greater for the overall trade balance than the impact on imports from higher fuel and fertilizer prices.

“We see upward bias for the trade surplus at the end of this year compared with our pre-war forecast,” he said. Inter’s 2026 trade surplus estimate, previously closer to $73 billion or $74 billion, now has an upward bias toward something closer to $80 billion.

On the import side, Herlon Brandão, director of foreign trade statistics and studies at the Foreign Trade Secretariat, said diesel import volumes fell 20% in March, but cautioned that it is still too early to directly link that movement to the conflict in the Middle East and that more data are needed.

“We are looking here at documentary records. These operations take time to clear customs, and fuel has that characteristic. So we may be looking at shipments that were cleared in March but may actually have arrived in earlier months.

“So, to say that the conflict is affecting flows, we need to wait a little longer.”

Imports in the petroleum fuel oils category, which includes diesel, reached $1.38 billion in March, up 20.5% in value. Prices rose 21.3% while volume fell 0.6% from the same month in 2025.

The data also show that imports of fertilizers totaled $1.31 billion, up 61% from a year earlier. Imported volume rose 31.1% and average prices increased 22.8%.

Barbosa of AZ Quest highlighted the broad increase in total imports in March, not only in value but also in volume, with gains of 20.1% and 18.9%, respectively. He said the figure differed from what had been seen through February, when foreign purchases still pointed to a plateau, suggesting a cooling in economic activity.

One figure that stood out was passenger car imports, which reached $1.13 billion in March, up 204% from the same month in 2025.

Barbosa noted, however, that the increase in import volumes was spread across several items, which “raises a warning flag.”