Apowerful lobby group funded by major US tech firms, including Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Uber, may have influenced Donald Trump’s decision to investigate Brazil’s “unfair” trade practices.
The Office of the United States Trade Representative last week launched an official investigation into Brazil’s practices on digital trade and electronic payment services, preferential tariffs, anti-corruption enforcement, intellectual property protection, ethanol import rules and illegal deforestation.
The US president announced the probe in a letter to his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, on 9 July. Trump also wrote that Brazilian products would be hit with a 50% US tariff from 1 August, blaming the “witch hunt” against his ally Jair Bolsonaro.
Brazil’s former president is on trial in the country’s Federal Supreme Court, accused of leading an armed conspiracy to seize power after he lost the 2022 election. The US president considers the trial unfair and believes he has the right to interfere in the judicial process of another state, and even retaliate against it.
Elsewhere in the letter, Trump accused the Brazilian Supreme Court of having “issued hundreds of SECRET and UNLAWFUL Censorship Orders on US social media platforms … threatening them with Millions of Dollars in Fines and Eviction from the Brazilian Social Media market)”.
These accusations echo some of the points raised by the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), an influential lobbying organisation representing US tech firms.
In October last year, the CCIA published a report in response to a request by the Office of the United States Trade Representative for comments on significant foreign trade barriers facing the US. Its paper looked at both broader issues and what it termed “country-specific concerns”.
The section on Brazil mapped out how policies enacted by the Brazilian executive and legislative branches had gone against the interests of Big Tech, and called on the US government to monitor, question and act against a variety of measures taken by the country.
Minutes after Trump announced the investigation into Brazil, the group published a statement applauding the initiative: “CCIA welcomes the attention of the administration toward Brazil’s barriers to US digital exports through a deliberative Section 301 investigation into the harms caused by discriminatory treatment.“
Section 301 is the clause in the 1974 US Trade Act that Trump used to launch proceedings against Brazil; it allows for the investigation of unfair trade practices and the imposition of penalties. Trump has already used the section for trade retaliation against China, India and some European Union countries.
The CCIA’s statement continued: “We look forward to these actions bringing relief for industry operations in Brazil and bringing back open and fair trade between these two important partners.”
Below is a summary of the main points of the lobbyists’ report.
In defence of X
The CCIA report recalled how the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court banned Elon Musk’s social media site, X, from operating in the country in August 2024, over its failure to appoint a legal representative in Brazil and pay a $5m fine. The ban was lifted six weeks later, after X complied with the court’s demands.
The lobby group argued that “this drastic step has implications for the broader investment landscape and could be copied by authoritarian regimes seeking to leverage control over content online to restrict freedom of speech or political dissent”.
It urged the US government to “ensure that local representation requirements do not unjustly hinder US firms’ access to the Brazilian market and result in blocking such as that imposed on X”, adding that cases like this “undermine the free flow of services and data” and the “open and globally connected internet”.
Against the General Data Protection Law
The organisation also criticised legislation introduced in Brazil for heightened data protection, stating that the country’s 2018 General Data Protection Law (LGPD) follows a similar law in the European Union but with stricter rules for cross-border data transfers.
The report called on the US to monitor the implementation of the LGPD and suggests that the US Trade Representative “should urge Brazil to deem privacy protections available in the United States as adequate under Brazilian law”.
The CCIA also called on the US government to “urge Brazil to reject” the draft bill 4097/2023, which it said would set new “digital sovereignty” measures. Under this legislation, IT companies offering services in Brazil would have mandatory local ownership and control obligations, such as putting 25% of their voting capital in the hands of Brazilians.
Fighting Brazil’s ‘blouses tax’
The lobby group questioned the so-called ‘blouses tax’ – a 20% import tax on online orders of $50 or less from international retailers, which was backed by Brazilian national retailers and introduced into law in August 2024.
The CCIA said that the tax increases the time and cost of the customs clearance process and serves as a barrier to e-commerce. It advocated for raising the value of orders that incur the additional taxation, pointing out that: “Current legislation allows for an increase of the threshold to USD $100 without the need for Congressional approval.”
The report also called on the US government to put pressure on Brazil, suggesting that the tax “could be inconsistent with Brazil’s General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) obligations”.
Challenges to AI development
Brazil’s artificial intelligence (AI) regulation bill, 2338/2023, approved by the Senate at the end of last year, was also a cause of concern for the lobby group. It wrote that the law could “severely restrict US AI developers, as well as other US businesses that deploy AI-powered services” and ultimately “harm US companies that compete with Chinese and other foreign providers”.
The law, which is now under scrutiny in Brazil’s House of Representatives, would require developers, distributors and applicators of AI to introduce measures designed to limit bias and potential discrimination by automated decision-making, as well as address copyright issues related to AI training.
According to the CCIA, it would impose “excessive reporting obligations for high and low-risk AI offerings, none of which are well defined”. One of its main complaints is about mandatory copyright compensation, “that extends far beyond proposals floated elsewhere globally, which would require developers to provide compensation for any Brazilian content used to train AI models.”
Against public platform regulation
The CCIA also took issue with draft bill 2768/2022, which would hand Brazil’s National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) powers to regulate, supervise and – where necessary – sanction digital platforms with annual revenues of more than $12.5m, including search engines, social networks, cloud computing and email services and video sharing platforms.
Such companies, considered by the bill “holders of essential access control power”, will also have to pay a fee of 2% over revenues to source a new Digital Platform Oversight Fund.
The bill, the Big Tech lobby group argued, would give the agency “broad discretionary authority to set the definitions and draft rules”.
“As such,” it continued, “the bill would empower Anatel to require US services providers to contribute to the telecommunications and transmissions infrastructure of Brazilian companies – some of which compete against these US firms in the realm of content and streaming – even though the US internet services do not have any direct access to or control over the infrastructure relevant to the fund.”
Against tax on digital products and services
The report called attention to the executive decree 1262/24, issued by the Brazilian Ministry of Finance, which set a minimum tax of 15% on foreign corporations operating in the country. This is in line with the rules proposed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to ensure that large multinational corporation pay a minimum level of tax on their income in each jurisdiction where they operate.
For the CCIA, “the government appears intent on seeking new revenue streams for its coffers by disproportionately taxing foreign corporations”. It asked the Office of the US Trade Representative to “remain watchful of Brazil’s actions on this matter”.
Taxing the internet
The group also pointed out that in 2023, Anatel launched a public consultation on the regulation of value-added services (supplementary features or enhancements that go beyond a product’s core offering), “including exploring the feasibility and appropriateness of network usage fees in Brazil”.
Taking issue with this, it said: “A proposal to impose network usage fees on “large” companies would by definition discriminate against US internet services, given their popularity in Brazil.”
The CCIA also criticised draft bill 2804/2024, currently pending in the Chamber of Deputies, which proposes that digital platforms contribute 5% of their revenue to the Universal Telecommunications Fund. According to the group, ”this law could violate the principle of competitive neutrality under the WTO’s [World Trade Organisation] rules governing universal service, as Brazilian suppliers would receive preferential treatment at the expense of foreign suppliers that are unable to access the Fund”.
The report urged the US Trade Representative “to remain vigilant as Brazil continues to pursue network usage fees”.
PayPal 
