The administration of Donald Trump stated that Brazil “failed to confront” the PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital) and the CV (Comando Vermelho) and said that the two powerful criminal groups transformed the country into a nerve center for the global flow of cocaine, according to the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper on Wednesday.
The criticisms appear in a document sent by the White House to the United States Congress on Tuesday. In the report, the Trump administration identifies countries considered major producers of narcotics or important drug trafficking routes and evaluates the efforts of foreign governments in the fight against drugs.
The document is a legal requirement and must be submitted annually to Congress, explained the São Paulo newspaper. The U.S. government states that the inclusion of a country on the list does not necessarily imply a negative assessment of its government’s efforts, as the classification also takes into account geographic, commercial, and economic factors.
In this year’s list, Washington classified 23 countries as major producers or transit routes for drugs, including Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Brazil does not appear on this list.
The U.S. president also pointed to four countries – Afghanistan, Bolivia, Myanmar, and Colombia – as governments that have not made sufficient efforts to meet their commitments in the fight against drugs in the last 12 months. Brazil is also not in this category.
Despite not including the country in either of these two formal classifications, Trump reserved a specific section of the determination to directly criticize the government of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva. “While many governments in the Western Hemisphere (a term that in the U.S. usually refers to the Americas) are taking brave measures to reduce the flow of drugs and eradicate cartels, the Brazilian government has failed to confront” the PCC and the Comando Vermelho, the text states.
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“These Brazilian terrorist organizations represent a growing threat to peace and security worldwide, and the Brazilian government urgently needs to take strong measures to confront and defeat them before they spread and grow,” it adds, according to the O Globo newspaper.
The mention of Brazil, notes Folha, represents a change from last year’s report, in which the country was not cited. In 2025, the White House focused its criticisms on countries such as Mexico, China, Colombia, and Venezuela, and addressed more generally the use of terrorism designations and sanctions against cartels and other transnational criminal organizations.
The United States removed Venezuela from its list of countries that have “demonstrated failure” in the fight against drug trafficking over the past year, which represents support for the government of Delcy Rodríguez, the interim and unelected president of the country. “Thanks to the arrest and removal of the illegitimate former dictator and drug trafficker Nicolás Maduro by my administration, we are already seeing the results of greater cooperation with the country’s interim government against the cartels,” Trump wrote in the document, also citing the elimination of Niño Guerrero, leader of the Tren Aragua, as one of the results of this cooperation.
Despite being removed from the list, Venezuela remains among the 23 countries with the highest drug trafficking or production in the world. Trump stated that he expects “continuous and tangible progress” from the Venezuelan interim government in dismantling narcoterrorist groups and disrupting drug trafficking to the United States.
