Trump’s Trade War Could Turbocharge Deforestation in the Amazon

This past December, I was driving down the Trans-Amazonian Highway, near the city of Santarém, in northern Brazil, when the road disappeared into what I thought was fog. When I got out of the car, though, I realized that the haze was smoke, wafting thick and acrid from the burning forest. The week before, Santarém had registered at 581 on the air-quality index—among the worst ratings in the world.

Fire is not a natural phenomenon in the Amazon, but now the flames arrive with alarming frequency and scale. Each dry season, farmers carve up and burn hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of acres in one of the world’s largest terrestrial carbon sinks to make way for cattle pastures and soy plantations, the leading engines of deforestation across Brazil. According to a January report, in recent years, deforestation due to soy production has increased.