Push for Tariffs on Chinese EVs in Brazil as BYD Comes to Town

Last Updated on: 20th June 2025, 01:40 am

As we’ve been reporting, Chinese EV giant BYD has been expanding into or rapidly accelerating the competition in more and more markets, including in Latin America. It has been offering more affordable — but still very good — electric cars than these markets had before. Brazil is one of those markets, and BYD is doing great there. However, just as the market is picking up charge, we’re getting some news that certain players in the market are trying to stifle EV growth — especially from BYD.

“The world’s largest car-carrying ship — with the equivalent of 20 football fields of vehicles — completed its maiden journey late last month to dock in Brazil’s Itajai port.

“But not everyone is cheering its arrival,” Reuters reports.

Indeed. Some in the auto industry are actually getting personal about this and want tariffs put on Chinese EVs. “Industry and labor groups say China is taking advantage of Brazil’s temporarily low tariff barriers to ramp up its exports rather than investing to build Brazilian factories and create jobs. They are lobbying Brazil’s government to accelerate by a year a plan to increase Brazil’s tariff on all EV imports to 35% from 10%, rather than gradually phasing in higher levies.”

So, just as the Brazilian EV market is getting going, some in the auto industry want to stall things by slapping tariffs on BYD and other Chinese EV sellers. Who’s shocked?

The argument is that companies like BYD have built up production capacity in China too much, are struggling to meet their sales/growth targets, and are looking for places to “dump” their cars at prices that are artificially low, too low. Is that what’s happening, or has BYD just gotten so advanced at EV production — in terms of scale and technical evolution — that it’s now producing highly competitive EVs that threaten the status quo?