The Trump administration has revoked the visa of Brazil’s top diplomat in the United States, according to a senior U.S. official, deepening a diplomatic rift between the Western Hemisphere’s two largest nations.
The visa of the Brazilian ambassador, Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, was canceled in response to her country’s decision to stall the approval of President Trump’s newly appointed ambassador to Brazil and refuse entry recently to several other U.S. diplomats, said a senior State Department official. The official spoke anonymously to discuss a sensitive diplomatic matter.
Ms. Viotti will not be kicked out of the United States, and her visa will be reinstated if Brazil accepts Daniel Perez, a Republican state lawmaker in Florida, as the next American ambassador to Brazil, according to the U.S. official.
Brazil’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Brazilian Embassy in Washington declined to comment.
The State Department, in a statement, said it had “given the Brazilian government every opportunity to do the right thing,” yet it had continued to delay Mr. Perez’s approval. “This is a reciprocal action,” the State Department said.
The Brazilian government sharply criticized the U.S. decision to revoke Ms. Viotti’s visa and rejected claims that it was acting in bad faith.
Brazil highlighted that the United States had violated international law by naming Mr. Perez before completing diplomatic due diligence and added that there is no limit on how long host countries can take to evaluate nominated ambassadors. “The U.S. request is still under review,” the government said in a statement.
The visa cancellation is the latest split between two governments that have spent the past year oscillating between confrontation and détente.
“This is very, very unique and severe,” said Carlos Poggio, a Brazilian professor of political science at Berea College, a private university in Kentucky. Revoking visas, he added, is a diplomatic tool that the United States normally reserves for unfriendly or authoritarian regimes. “Brazil is not a U.S. adversary,” he said. “It’s actually a major ally.”
At the center of the spat is Mr. Perez, whom Mr. Trump nominated in June. But breaking with diplomatic norms, the United States did not consult Brazil before selecting Mr. Perez for the job, according to two senior officials who did not want to be named publicly discussing the matter.
Before a nation sends an ambassador abroad, it typically asks the host government to approve the nominee, a longstanding diplomatic tradition that most countries observe.
In Brazil, this omission was read as a major diplomatic snub that added to the already frayed relations between the two nations, according to a senior Brazilian government official who requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive diplomatic issue. In response, Brazil has not moved to approve Mr. Perez’s posting, throwing a wrench in the process.
On Tuesday, the State Department official said the United States believed Brazil was intentionally withholding the approval, stalling until the country holds its presidential elections in October. The U.S. ambassador post in Brasília, the capital, has been vacant since January 2025.
The official also pointed to a recent decision by the Brazilian government to bar the entry of several senior U.S. officials. Brazilian officials maintained that the envoys sought to meddle in the nation’s upcoming elections and sow unfounded doubts about electoral fraud.
In March, Brazil revoked the visa of a senior Trump envoy after learning that he planned to visit Jair Bolsonaro, the former president convicted of plotting a coup after losing the last election, and meet his son, Flávio Bolsonaro, who is running for president this fall.
The younger Bolsonaro is challenging President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist, and has repeatedly visited the White House to lobby President Trump to help his political movement, including by designating Brazil’s two largest gangs as terrorist organizations. Crime and security are concerns for Brazilian voters and a potential vulnerability for Mr. Lula.
Then, on July 24, Brazil also denied visas to two other senior U.S. State Department officials, which the Brazilian foreign ministry said were intending to “cast doubt on the credibility of Brazil’s electoral system.”
On Tuesday, the senior State Department official countered that they were denied entry to Brazil to perform routine diplomatic work. Adding to the feud between the two countries, the Trump administration late last month applied a new round of tariffs on Brazilian imports, citing unfair trading practices. Brazil’s government has denounced the levies.
The Trump administration’s move to revoke the Brazilian ambassador’s visa suggests that tensions between the two countries could increase as Brazil’s presidential election approaches, said Lucas de Souza Martins, an instructor in U.S. politics and global affairs at Temple University and a former official at Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“Brazil is the new target of the U.S.,’’ he said.
Thayz Guimarães contributed reporting from Brasília.
