The deadline was set this year by the World Trade Organization, which found that US assistance to cotton farmers distorts world prices by encouraging overproduction.

If implemented, Brazil's plan would negatively affect a range of US industries, from entertainment to software to pharmaceuticals.

``Essentially, the Brazilian position would be: `We're going to have state-sanctioned piracy,''' said Neil Turkewitz, an executive vice president of the Recording Industry Association of America, the US music industry's largest trade and lobbying group.

While it's not unusual for nations to slap high tariffs on a basket of goods as retaliation in disputes, sanctioning the copying of one country's products is unconventional and possibly illegal, said trade officials. At the minimum, the move would require a new law in Brazil and WTO approval, they said.

The plan was the topic of a legislative committee meeting in Brasilia, the nation's capital, Thursday.

Richard Mills, a spokesman for US Trade Representative Robert Portman, called talk of Brazilian action premature.

``We intend to comply so there will not be any need for retaliation,'' he said.

Cotton farmers in the United States received US$1.6 billion (HK$12.48 billion) in federal subsidies last year, according to the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based non-profit organization that tracks data.

Brazil's proposed strategy is designed to draw Hollywood, Silicon Valley and big pharmaceuticals into the trade battle, said Pedro de Comargo Neto, head of a large farm organization and a former trade official who oversaw the nation's successful challenge of US cotton payments.

``We want other parties in the United States to understand that what the cotton lobby is doing is not in their interest,'' he said.

Rather than enlisting allies, the strategy could have the opposite effect.

A move against US copyrights or patents would probably draw retaliation from Washington on key Brazilian exports, said Dan Glickman, chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America and agriculture secretary in the Clinton administration.

``They sell a lot of airplanes in the United States,'' he said, referring to commuter aircraft maker Embraer. ``This could become a pretty serious tit-for-tat trade dispute.''

About US$35 billion of trade occurs between the two countries each year.

Ordinarily, Brazil would raise tariffs on US goods - the typical WTO-sanctioned remedy for making nations comply with the trade body's rulings. But such a strategy is rarely effective and would only raise the price that Brazilian consumers pay for imported US products, said Comargo.

Entertainment and software make especially tempting targets because of the ease with which they can be copied. Piracy of music and movies is already a big problem for US entertainment companies in Brazil, accounting for up to 60 percent of the market.

US companies are estimated to have lost nearly US$1 billion last year from copyright infringement in Brazil.

Nonetheless, Brazilians see economic and social advantages to easing copyright and patent restrictions.

Making generic versions of drugs that fight HIV infection and other maladies are attractive because they have a ``social'' value and reduce health-care expenses, said Fernando Gabeira, a member of the Chamber of Deputies' committee that took up the issue Thursday.