Rio Times · Brazil

Brazil spent a year preparing its big tech bill, aimed at the largest technology platforms. Then Washington attached tariffs to the argument.

What emerged in July is not a surrender. It is a smaller net, cast over fewer companies, later.

Congress in Brasília, where the vote on the digital markets bill has been pushed back. (Photo internet reproduction)

What the bill was meant to do

Bill 4.675/2025 would let CADE, Brazil’s competition regulator, designate certain platforms as being of systemic relevance in digital markets, and then impose obligations on them in advance: limits on favouring their own services, duties to make systems work with rivals, transparency about how rankings and algorithms operate, and a requirement to notify acquisitions.

The distinction that matters is between acting before and acting after. Competition law normally punishes abuse once it has happened and been proven, which in digital markets can take years. This bill would let the regulator set rules for the largest platforms up front. Europe took the same approach with its Digital Markets Act.

It would have made Brazil one of the largest democracies outside the European Union to regulate the platforms this way.

What the new draft changes

Between late June and mid-July the rapporteur circulated a substitute text that tightens who can be captured. The revenue thresholds did not move: roughly R$50 billion (about US$9.8 billion) in global revenue, or R$5 billion (about US$985 million) generated in Brazil. What changed is what happens after a company clears that bar. The original text weighed the other criteria – data volume, number of business and end users, gatekeeper characteristics – separately. The new text requires them to be assessed jointly, which makes the label harder to attach.

Designation would also be time-limited. The rapporteur’s office says the maximum term is now six years, down from ten in the original bill, and that a designation can be reopened after two years if competitive conditions shift materially.

The rapporteur presented the changes as increasing legal certainty while keeping the objective of disciplining large platforms. CADE’s acting president, Diogo Thomson de Andrade, has said the regulator is open to redrafting parts of the text that are not clear. Critics of the original text had argued it handed the regulator powers broad enough to reach ordinary digital businesses.

The architecture survives. The number of companies it can reach does not.

The tariff pressure in the background

This did not happen in isolation. The United States ran a trade investigation into Brazil under Section 301 that named Brazilian digital regulation, and closed it on 15 July with a 25% tariff on many Brazilian goods, effective 22 July. Twenty Republican members of Congress wrote to the US Trade Representative in late July citing this bill by number.

Platform lobbying ran alongside it, as did opposition pressure inside Congress, where the bill was already contested.

Draw the causal line carefully. What is documented is that the softening and the delay happened while that pressure was being applied. No official has said the bill was changed in exchange for tariff relief, and it would be wrong to report that they did.

What was not touched

The decrees published on 21 May 2026 dealing with platform content moderation obligations remain in force, and legal challenges have so far failed to suspend them. They were not part of this revision. Coverage that treats the whole Brazilian digital agenda as abandoned is wrong on that point.

What has been deferred is the competition piece – the part that would have changed how the largest platforms are allowed to behave in the market, rather than what they must remove from their services.

The vote has not been scheduled. Until it is, the softened text is a draft, and drafts in the Brazilian Congress have been narrowed and widened again more than once.

Frequently Asked Questions

Has Brazil dropped its big-tech regulation?

No. Bill 4.675/2025 was narrowed and its vote delayed. The May 2026 decrees on content moderation remain in force.

Which companies would be covered now?

Far fewer. The reported thresholds are around R$50 billion in global revenue or R$5 billion in Brazil, together with data-volume tests, which limits the law to a small group of the largest platforms.

Was this done because of US tariffs?

US pressure through the Section 301 investigation, platform lobbying and domestic opposition all coincided with the change. No official has stated a trade for tariff relief, and none should be assumed.

Sources: Bill 4.675/2025 as circulated · CADE statements · Brazilian legislative reporting · MLex