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Editor: Wen Shuqi
All through May, the airports in São Paulo, Brazil, saw a noticeable uptick in Chinese business faces.
On May 11, Brazil rolled out visa-free entry for Chinese citizens. The very next day, a new policy kicked in, exempting cross-border packages under $50 from federal import duties. Wave after wave of Chinese foreign trade professionals flew halfway around the world to check out what’s often called the “last blue ocean” market.
“Logically speaking, Brazil is probably the only country among all the overseas markets right now that’s big, fast-growing, and—if you’ve got deep enough pockets—you can jump in and actually make money,” said Sun Hua, a foreign trade veteran who’s been keeping a close eye on Latin America’s e-commerce scene.
In Latin America, the last high-growth region on the planet, Brazil boasts a population of 200 million, a per capita GDP over $10,000, and the highest online spending penetration in the region. By any macro metric, Brazil looks like a blue ocean full of promise.
But once they actually set foot there, most Chinese merchants realize that this South American gem—famous for football, samba, and rainforests—hides a maze of tough hurdles.
Going Local: The Secret to Tapping a Market Half a World Away
Half a world away—literally. The physical distance between Brazil and China is a natural barrier for any trade business.
Sun Hua told us that shipping from Chinese ports to Brazil by sea usually takes two to three months. Air freight? Ten to fifteen days. And if you go through unconventional customs channels, out of three containers, only one might make it through smoothly.
Bulk goods have to go by sea, which means months-long lead times and massive capital tied up. Sun did a rough calculation: if you don’t have at least 2 million yuan in cash flow, it’s really hard to play the Brazil game. That financial entry barrier naturally weeds out a lot of merchants.
That’s also why, in recent years, the Chinese platforms that succeeded in Brazil almost all went the local route.
Before overseas platforms arrived, Brazil’s e-commerce landscape was dominated by Mercado Libre—a “one superpower, several strong players” setup. According to a 2022 report from the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Mercado Libre accounted for 22.2% of Brazil’s total market traffic, with Amazon in second place at 13%.
Around 2020, Shopee started ramping up its push into the Brazilian market. According to an insider, the key to Shopee’s breakthrough was seizing a unique window. The pandemic triggered an explosion in online shopping, which gave them a huge boost. More sellers meant more product variety, and consumers naturally followed.
Shopee initially used zero commissions and copied its Southeast Asia playbook to quickly gain traction. Then it invested heavily in building its own logistics network, “Shopee Express,” which now handles over 50% of the platform’s orders. In 2024, Shopee launched its 3PF program (third-party warehouse local fulfillment), letting Chinese sellers use a Brazilian tax ID to ship locally, lowering the barrier for merchants. Today, both Shopee’s in-house logistics and Mercado Libre offer same-day delivery within the same city.
Over the past two years, because of tighter tax policies on cross-border small parcels, platforms have actually been shrinking their cross-border business and pouring more into local operations. Sellers who rely on cross-border direct mail can’t compete with local sellers on speed. Earlier this year, Shopee even organized a trip for top Southeast Asian sellers to visit Brazil and check out local official warehouses—a clear signal that they want merchants to set up local operations.
In the second quarter of 2025, Shopee’s parent company Sea Limited confirmed that Shopee had become the top e-commerce platform in Brazil by order volume, surpassing Mercado Libre.
Fast-fashion platform SHEIN is also going local. SHEIN already works with 300 local factories in Brazil, with locally produced goods making up 55% of its offerings. It plans to raise that share to 85% by the end of 2026.
TikTok is catching up fast too. It started in Brazil last June, and in less than a year, industry insiders estimate that TikTok Brazil has exploded, already matching or even surpassing its Mexican market, which started six months earlier. TikTok’s first “Brazil Economic Impact Report” shows that as of March 2026, TikTok has 134 million monthly active users in Brazil—about half the country’s population.
As the Latin American e-commerce giant, Mercado Libre’s growth might be slower than the Chinese platforms’, but its foundation is solid, and it’s also quickly filling in its Chinese supply chain capabilities.
Can Chinese Goods Fill Brazilians’ Shopping Carts?
To understand Brazil’s market, you have to look at everyday life there.
A Chinese employee at an internet company in Brazil shared her observations: most of her Brazilian friends buy clothes on SHEIN because they’re cheap. Fast-fashion brands in local malls are pricey, but the quality doesn’t always match up.
This reflects a structural issue in Brazil’s manufacturing sector. High labor costs, limited production tech maturity, and past government policies that slapped high import tariffs to protect local industries. The result? Consumers pay a premium without necessarily getting decent quality. The same employee said that a phone case that costs a few yuan in China can sell for over 100 reais (about 135 yuan) in a Brazilian mall.
“Cheap and good Chinese products? No doubt they’re competitive in Brazil,” she added.
That’s why the new Brazilian tax policy announced on May 12 sent shockwaves through the cross-border e-commerce world.
Under the new rules, cross-border packages under $50 are exempt from the 20% federal import duty. Sun Hua told us this is a direct boost for platforms like AliExpress, Shopee, Temu, and TikTok that rely on small parcels. Take a $50 item as an example: the buyer’s tax drops from about $22 to just over $12, so the total price goes from $72 to $62. For price-sensitive Brazilian shoppers, that’s a big difference.
“Orders suddenly shot up,” said several AliExpress merchants after the policy took effect, reporting huge jumps in Brazilian orders and traffic. To seize the moment, platforms moved fast—AliExpress started using multiple weekly charter flights to speed up customs clearance and even signed a memorandum of understanding with Brazil’s postal service on May 28 to boost last-mile delivery.
In theory, the barrier for cross-border small parcels has definitely come down. Sun Hua did some quick math: a small seller making 10 yuan per order could pull in 10,000 yuan a month by moving 1,000 orders in Brazil. “Compare that to the cutthroat Southeast Asian market, where profit per order might be just 2 yuan—you’d need 5,000 orders to hit the same income,” he predicted. Brazil is about to see a boom in small-parcel cross-border trade.
The Survivor’s Game
But Brazil’s tax system is a maze. The tariff on mid-to-high-priced items dropped from 60% to 30%, but that’s still steep. Plus, each state charges its own ICMS tax on goods, ranging from 17% to 20%, and there are extra taxes like PIS and COFINS.
Take the phone case business again. News learned that some entrepreneurs, to avoid high declared values at customs, only export “blank” phone cases—semi-finished products without prints—to Brazil, where they finish the printing locally. That way, they pay tax only on the low-cost materials, sidestepping high tariffs.
Around 2010, Brazil saw a similar small-parcel boom, and lots of Yiwu merchants flooded in. During the 2014 World Cup, Yiwu’s exports to Brazil jumped 15.8% year-over-year in the first quarter, with sports goods surging 41.7%.
Looking back, most of those early Yiwu sellers in Brazil didn’t stick around. And that’s the real story of Brazil: the good times don’t last forever.
“A lot of Chinese people coming to Brazil lately have big misconceptions,” said a local service provider who runs a business there, listing challenges like high hidden costs for doing business, a complex tax system, low labor productivity, and worsening security—any misstep can cost a company dearly.
Want to operate legally in Brazil? Getting a business license is the first hurdle. Sun Hua told us most sellers buy a local person’s identity documents to register a company—it’s hard to go fully compliant. “A fully compliant business license alone can cost over 100,000 yuan.” And using a borrowed identity to open a store? If you get caught, your store gets shut down and funds frozen—almost guaranteed.
A Shenzhen seller bought an account through a middleman, but right away Brazil’s judicial authorities launched a crackdown. His three main stores got shut down, 600,000 yuan in accounts were frozen, and millions in goods in transit were affected. According to a survey by a Shenzhen cross-border consulting firm, in the past year, no fewer than 10 sellers suffered losses from such “borrowed accounts,” tax filing errors, or goods being seized.
Going through official channels is no picnic either—Brazil’s customs requirements are super strict. A Shenzhen 3C seller had an entire container of electronics held up at the port because the SKU description didn’t exactly match the invoice—say, listing “wireless earbuds” instead of “Bluetooth earbuds.” In the end, the penalty for the delay was higher than the value of the goods themselves.
Local operations after landing are no walk in the park either. The same internet company employee in Brazil added, “Unions here are powerful; they often strike and protest. Companies never dare to ask employees to work overtime, because labor law would force them to compensate with time off or risk legal trouble.” Anyone going local has to shoulder these hidden costs.
That vast distance and high business barriers mean that almost every overseas company that makes it in Brazil shares one trait: deep pockets and a long-term commitment. Whether it’s localized Shopee, J&T Express with its 99%-plus local delivery network, or the fast-growing TikTok, they’re all survivors in a game of survivor bias.
Now, the tax perks are back. The 2026 World Cup in the US, Mexico, and Canada is around the corner. The merchants who left are getting restless again. But that rush itself is a red flag: when everyone piles into the same channel, competition quickly eats away at profits.
The entry barrier may have lowered, but the real difficulty hasn’t. Is Brazil a blue ocean or a pricey testing ground? For companies going global, the real test begins the moment they land in São Paulo.
