Will Brazil Subtly Sweep Consumer Welfare Under the Rug?
Brazil’s long-anticipated Bill 4,675/2025, which President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government submitted last month to Congress, proposes to enact ex-ante regulation for digital markets (I offered an initial assessment here). While presented as a natural evolution of competition law, the proposal would instead alter some foundational aspects of the Brazilian antitrust framework.
The measure would amend Brazil’s existing Competition Law, rather than create a standalone regime like the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). But in doing so, it establishes an entirely new set of competition goals that risks undermining the existing economically grounded enforcement system—or, at least, conflating the ex-post and ex-ante enforcement of antitrust rules.