President Donald Trump had a good White House meeting with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva this week. Now he should press to end Brazil’s discrimination against American tech companies.
Brazil’s Bill 4675 imposes “burdensome, size-based obligations on a narrow set of American tech companies,” Americans for Tax Reform noted. The text of the bill is to be finalized by June, and it can be brought to a vote at any time.
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In theory, the Fair Competition Act for Digital Markets would create a new regulatory framework for digital companies and make the market more competitive. In practice, it would do the opposite.
The legislation is modeled on Europe’s Digital Markets Act. Both adopt an ex ante approach, singling out tech firms based on their size rather than on their anticompetitive conduct.
The U.S. Trade Representative has added the Fair Competition Act for Digital Markets to its 2026 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers, and for good reason.
The bill would designate certain firms as “agents of systematic relevance” and impose onerous regulations on those with annual global revenue above $9.5 billion. As a practical matter, this discriminates against American companies simply for being leaders in their field.
This strategy hasn’t worked in Europe, which lags in consumer technology and digital platform innovation. In emerging fields such as artificial intelligence, Europe is also behind, unable to compete with the United States, China, and others.
That is because Europe has chosen to regulate rather than innovate. Brazil should not do the same, for it would reap the same grim consequences.
Bill 4675 would do serious harm to Brazil’s relationship with the U.S. and has much to lose.
In 2025, bilateral trade between the two countries totaled $134.1 billion. America is the largest investor in Brazil. In 2024, U.S. foreign direct investment there totaled $88 billion.
As the U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently noted, the bill undermines legal certainty and investor confidence. It also undercuts Brazil’s ambitions to “advance digital transformation and bolster competitiveness.” Its passage would be an own goal.
Lula and Trump have a contentious relationship. In July 2025, Trump called Lula’s decision to jail his predecessor and political opponent, Jair Bolsonaro, a “witch hunt.” He announced a tariff increase to “rectify the grave injustices of the current regime.” Lula responded by calling Trump an “emperor.”
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Lula’s support for Bill 4675 is unsurprising. The Latin American leftist has long favored a heavy-handed, interventionist approach to the economy. Yet that has hindered growth, which has fallen to its lowest rate since 2020. An old saying has it that “Brazil is the country of tomorrow — and always will be.” But it does not have to be.
Brazil can have both a better future and a better relationship with the U.S. Lula can start by ending his support for Bill 4675. If the self-described socialist needs a push, Trump should provide it.
