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The article analyzes the representations produced by American think tanks regarding Brazil between 2000 and 2016, a period of greater Brazilian external prominence and whose international projection represented an epistemic challenge for the Washington establishment. For that, the institutional panorama in which this ideational production was articulated and disseminated in the United States was depicted, and the methodology of content analysis was employed to investigate these publications and the interviews carried out with actors who operate in this environment. It is argued that this production fed a narrative of shared values in which Brazil would act in a convergent manner with the US in sharing the costs of maintaining order in regions such as South America and West Africa. However, the dissent regarding the principle of sovereignty and the role of the BRICS and the retraction of foreign policy, accentuated by the Brazilian domestic crisis, also engendered a narrative that emphasizes distrust of Brazilian capabilities and disappointment regarding its external protagonism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]