Crikey | 10 April 2026
‘Expect more pressure’: How the Trump administration is bullying the world on behalf of big tech
by Krisna Adhi Pradipta, Justin Hendrix, Ethel Rudnitzki, Natalia Viana
When US President Donald Trump took office on January 20th, 2025, he announced a new trade policy for the US, saying he was “establishing a robust and reinvigorated trade policy that promotes investment and productivity, enhances our Nation’s industrial and technological advantages”.
This speech served as an opening gesture for lobbying actors that work to reduce export taxes and tariffs, especially those affecting big tech companies.
A month later, the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) — an organisation that represents tech giants such as Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta — issued a list of priorities for the United States Trade Representative (USTR) on what they call “unfair Foreign Digital Trade Practices”. Each year, the group sends comments for the National Trade Estimates Report (NTE). In October 2024, CCIA identified 395 “non-tariff barriers” in 54 countries.
Taking advantage of the new government’s disposition, the organisation reinforced its comments and demanded a “firm response” against measures from 23 of those countries, requesting the use of “all diplomatic and legal tools available”, including “bilateral trade agreements or investigations under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act”.
The government fulfilled the request and by the end of 2025 included digital trade clauses on deals or frameworks with at least 10 countries, according to an investigation by the consortium Big Tech’s Invisible Hand, a coalition of 17 media outlets in 13 countries, including Crikey, co-led by Agência Pública and the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP).
Many of these agreements were signed as a result of the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, which ultimately served as a pressure tool to prevent the regulation of big tech firms in these countries. Indonesia signed the latest such deal on February 20.
“The agreements address all the pain points of tech companies through fast bilateral deals, not multilateral negotiations. They impose one-sided obligations. Tech companies presented their priorities, and the US government acted on them. And this never happened before”, said Burcu Kilic, a senior fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation, a Canada-based think tank.
Despite occurring within the context of trade negotiations, the clauses are not limited to reducing taxes and tariffs on products and impact laws and projects that regulate the activity of big tech companies in the countries involved.
“In essence, regulating platforms doesn’t necessarily address trade issues, but there is an attempt to frame the economic impact of this as a non-tariff barrier, because regulatory projects foresee fines, for example,” said Jamila Venturini, executive director of the Latin American organisation Digital Rights.
Responding to this report, CCIA denied that there is a direct link between the agreements signed with the US government and delays in big tech regulation. “The relationship between tariff negotiations and the timing of digital services regulation varies significantly across jurisdictions, and it is not always possible to draw a direct or consistent link”, said the vice president for digital trade, Jonathan McHale.
The organisation also said it prioritises “good-faith engagement and targeted approaches to address trade barriers rather than raising tariffs for their own sake” when talking to governments and regulatory agencies.
The USTR did not respond to our questions.
Agreements in South Asia
The first country to signal a framework committing to limit digital regulations was Indonesia on July 22, 2025. To lower the tariffs imposed by the US from 32% to 19%, the country pledged to, among other things, “address barriers affecting digital trade, services, and investment” and “provide certainty regarding the ability to transfer personal data out of its territory to the United States”.
In effect, the commitment goes against the country’s data protection law, which requires explicit user consent for the transfer of data to foreign territories. This was one of the priority points that the CCIA sent to the USTR earlier in the year.
“Annoyed by this requirement of the Data Protection Law, American companies operating in Indonesia tried to influence the USTR in the tariff negotiation process between the American and Indonesian governments, including the law as a non-tariff barrier,” said Wahyudi Djafar, director of the Indonesian Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy.
In response, digital and civil society activists organised protests across the country.
“The population reacted because they didn’t like having their data treated as a bargaining chip in tariff negotiations,” Djafar said.
According to the chairman of the Indonesia Cyber Security Forum, Ardi Sutedja, designating the US as a trusted jurisdiction as stipulated in the agreement may create the perception that US data protection is already adequate. But he said that, in reality, international best practices still require transparency and risk assessments, including against the possibility of illegal access by foreign governments.
The Indonesian government, Ardi said, cannot ignore the risk of loopholes that allow foreign businesses to bypass data protection requirements applicable in Indonesia. Without proper regulation, data transfers could instead facilitate excessive data collection, from profiling to misuse for commercial or political purposes.
Other discussions about social media regulation also cooled down in the country. The implementation of the national data protection authority, which was supposed to be appointed by Indonesia’s president by 2024, for example, has not yet happened. “Companies know that if Indonesia fully implements the Data Protection Law in the country, they will not be able to transfer data from Indonesia to the US, because they don’t have an equivalent data protection law,” Djafar said.
Additionally, the agreement has also raised concerns within the Indonesian media industry about its potential impact on the country’s publishers’ rights initiative. Press organisations warn that these provisions could weaken mandated obligations for major platforms to financially support news production through licensing and revenue-sharing schemes.
“Its nature shifts from mandatory to voluntary,” said Publisher Rights Committee member Sasmito Madrim at the Indonesian Press Council building on February 24, 2026, to Tempo, a partner of Big Tech’s Invisible Hand.
A final agreement between Indonesia and the US was signed on February 20, following commitments signalled last year. According to an analysis by the watchdog group Public Citizen, the new deal “eliminates tax, privacy, and accountability regulations on big tech”.
The same path is being followed by other governments in Southeast Asia. On October 26, 2025, five other countries in the region made progress in negotiations on tariffs related to digital trade. For instance, Vietnam included a clause to “finalise commitments on digital trade in services and investments” in the framework for a trade deal with the US.
The agreements signed by Thailand, South Korea, Cambodia and Malaysia with the US were even more incisive. All four countries pledged not to implement “discriminatory” measures against US digital services and products.
According to experts consulted by Agencia Pública, the expression is vague and could target any legislation that imposes limits on digital platforms, since the vast majority of them are concentrated in the US.
“When a country commits to a non-discrimination clause, they actually end up not being able to impose any kind of regulation on digital services, because if you want to impose legislation on search engines, for example, the law will practically only apply to American companies, which could be seen as discriminatory,” Burcu Kilic said.
Anticipating this possible interpretation, the Malaysian government added a footnote to the “non-discrimination” clause stating that “for greater legal certainty, Malaysia has the right to regulate in the public interest”. However, this observation does not appear in the version of the deal published on the White House website.
Digital rights activists in the country fear that the agreement will continue a policy that gives carte blanche to American companies that handle Malaysian data. In January 2025, the government signed an executive order that excluded companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google from the requirements imposed by the Cybersecurity Law approved in 2024 in the country.
“With the order, these companies were exempted from the obligation to report cybersecurity incidents and data breaches,” said Khairil Yusof, coordinator of the Sinar Project, a Malaysian digital transparency organisation.
Yusuf said he believed the “non-discrimination” clause could be an attempt to “extend this exception to all US companies”, such as Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and Elon Musk’s X.
The agreement also guaranteed a cross-border transfer of electronic data between the US and Malaysia “for the conduct of business”, and established a partnership between the two countries to “address cybersecurity challenges and matters of mutual interest”. Identical clauses were included in the agreement signed with Cambodia.
“These agreements make countries even more dependent on US digital services and, consequently, lose the ability to regulate them,” Kilic said.
Reducing the regulatory space in Latin America
The same strategy was repeated in Latin America. Argentina, El Salvador, Ecuador and Guatemala have all signed frameworks for trade deals with the US that include clauses on digital services.
In the Argentinian case, in addition to the repeated “non-discrimination” clause, the country also agreed to “recognise the US as an appropriate jurisdiction under Argentine law for the cross-border transfer of data, including personal data”.
For Jamila Venturini, the agreement represented an attempt to “circumvent local data protection law”, which, like Indonesia’s, would require user consent for the transfer of data to third parties.
“They are establishing, via bilateral agreement, an exceptional authorisation for data sharing with a country that does not have an equivalent level of protection,” she said.
The four countries pledged to support a permanent moratorium at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on tariffs on electronic transmissions that is being pushed by the US. This commitment was made in the context of the expiration of the organisation’s existing rule that prevented this type of taxation until this year.
“What the United States did through these bilateral agreements, which also relates to this administration’s stance of not respecting multilateral forums, was to shield itself against any change in this direction,” Venturini said.
Pressure has an effect beyond agreements
The agreements with Argentina, Ecuador, and El Salvador could be explained by the close relationship between the right-wing presidents of these countries and Trump, but they also created pressure for other non-allied countries to accept similar terms.
“When you have a group of four or five countries that have already signed these conditions, the US would be able to validate their strategy,” Venturini said.
This appeared to be the case in Brazil. Although the country has not signed any agreement or commitment with the United States and has moved forward with some projects to regulate platforms — such as the approval of the Digital ECA last year, which establishes accountability, parental control, and the mandatory implementation of measures to prevent children’s exposure to adult content, bets, and pornography — the imposition of tariffs by the US has had an impact on discussions of digital rights at the domestic level.
“The weight of the pressure fell on the artificial intelligence project,” said Alexandre Gonzales, a member of the Rights in Network Coalition.
Bill 2338/23, which aimed to regulate the use of AI in the country, was approved in the Brazilian Senate at the end of 2024 and was scheduled to be passed by the Chamber of Deputies in 2025, but ended up losing momentum. The proposal had been listed as one of the priority non-tariff barriers presented by the CCIA to the American government in February 2025, along with projects for the regulation of streaming services (Bill 2331/2022) and the regulation of digital markets (Bill 2768/2022).
According to Gonzales, the three proposals underwent changes or were delayed following the imposition of tariffs by the US.
“My interpretation is that they are presenting a weak version of regulatory or tariff proposals, supposedly to appease the White House and the lobby of these large companies,” he said.
Venturini added: “It’s a constant underlying pressure, like a measure that generates widespread legislative self-censorship. So any attempt to regulate digital services can end up being silenced by a fear of triggering a trade penalty from the United States.”
Additionally, at the request of big tech lobbyists — as revealed by Agência Pública — the US embassy in Brazil sent Matthew Lowe, an economic affairs advisor, to the Brazilian senate to lobby against the vote on the bill that would regulate streaming services and social networks that monetise videos. The bill was not voted on.
This was an example of the so-called “chilling effect”, highlighted in research by Digital Policy Alert (DPA).
“Governments are adapting their domestic digital policies even without deal commitments”, a study by the organisation said.
Examples have included the elimination or reduction of taxes on digital services in Canada, Pakistan, and India, according to the study: “It applies pressure not only to existing policy, but also to proposals and enforcement action.”
At the end of last year, the CCIA praised the US government’s “progress” in negotiations on digital tariffs.
“Commitments made on digital trade between the US and Malaysia, Indonesia, and the EU this year on topics including network usage fees, digital taxes, and local content requirements are encouraging, and we welcome continued focus on outstanding barriers to US digital services exports,” a statement published at the end of October said.
For this ongoing work, the organisation sent a new list of what it considers “non-tariff barriers” to digital commerce to the USTR, citing 516 measures from 61 countries — 30% more than the previous year — especially in Southeast Asia, Oceania and Latin America.
The document cited as “asymmetric platform regulation initiatives” the discussions in Australia regarding the implementation of a digital markets law following the European model, as well as Bill 4675/25 in Brazil.
The CCIA also referred to measures that require greater data security for children and adolescents online as “government content restriction”, such as the Digital Child Protection Act (ECA Digital) in Brazil, the ban on social media access for children under 16 in Australia, and similar initiatives under discussion in Canada, Colombia and Indonesia.
The pressure has not relented. In February, the White House advanced negotiations with India and Bangladesh to reduce tariffs imposed on products from these countries. The framework for the agreements echoed clauses that could undermine data protection and the regulation of big tech, such as the elimination of so-called “discriminatory barriers” on digital services and the “free transfer of data” between the countries.
Even with the US Supreme Court striking down Trump’s international tariffs in February, experts say the US will continue to push for limits to digital services regulations in other countries.
“Governments with digital policies that cross with US interests should expect more pressure, learn from each other on the international level, and strategise on domestic implementation,” the report by Digital Policy Alert (DPA) argued.
This speech served as an opening gesture for lobbying actors that work to reduce export taxes and tariffs, especially those affecting big tech companies.
A month later, the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) — an organisation that represents tech giants such as Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta — issued a list of priorities for the United States Trade Representative (USTR) on what they call “unfair Foreign Digital Trade Practices”.
