Asia’s share in Brazilian imports extend beyond China

Asia’s growing share of Brazilian imports has been driven largely by China, but other countries in the region, albeit from a smaller base, have also expanded shipments to Brazil at rates above the average.

China is also helping spur Brazilian imports from other nations, especially in Southeast Asia, said Livio Ribeiro, a partner at BRCG and a researcher at FGV Ibre.

“Chinese companies are beginning to build structures to relocate factory exports to countries with lower labor costs, such as Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia, initially outsourcing lower value-added industrial goods. China then stops earning mainly from selling the product and starts earning through royalties, profits, and dividends. It’s essentially what the U.S. did with China in the 2000s,” he said.

The following chart provides a monthly comparison of containerized imports from China to Brazil starting in January 2022. Data is sourced from Datamar’s DataLiner platform.

Containerized Imports | Brazil vs. China | Jan 2022 – Dec 2025 | TEUs

Source: DataLiner (click here to request a demo)

Oil platforms imported last year are an example of the integrated production chains that now exist in Asia, Ribeiro said.

Brazil imported $5.4 billion in oil platforms last year, of which $2.7 billion came from China and another $2.5 billion from Singapore. That helped lift Asia’s share of Brazilian imports in 2025. In 2024, platform imports totaled $534 million. According to Petrobras, the Singaporean platform had its hull built at shipyards in China and South Korea and incorporated modules manufactured in Brazil, China, and Singapore.

Johanna Guevara Méndez, an international trade consultant, highlighted India’s performance, noting the country has been gaining ground in both Brazilian exports and imports. While Brazil’s imports of Indian goods rose 84.1% from 2019 to 2025, Brazil’s exports to India climbed nearly 150%, from $2.8 billion to $6.9 billion.

“India’s advance doesn’t surprise me. The country has been doing focused and strategic work to expand trade flows,” she said. India has been active in polymers and is also strong in inputs for the hospital sector and pharmaceutical products.

As Brazil’s export and import flows were reshuffled in 2025, India also captured a slice of Brazil’s diesel imports, said André Valério, an economist at Banco Inter.

Data from the Foreign Trade Secretariat (SECEX) at the Ministry of Development, Industry, Trade and Services (MDIC) show that fuel oils were the second-most imported Indian product by Brazil in 2025, totaling $1.1 billion, of which $900 million was diesel. In 2022, India was Brazil’s second-largest supplier of diesel, behind the U.S. The Americans, however, lost that position to Russia in 2023, shortly after Europe imposed an embargo on Russian fuels following the invasion of Ukraine.

Last year, Russia remained Brazil’s largest external source of diesel, though imports fell 20% from 2024. Shipments of U.S. diesel rose 126%, while imports from India jumped 254%. India ranked third among suppliers in 2025, behind the U.S. The product Brazil imported most from India that year was organo-inorganic compounds, heterocyclic compounds, and nucleic acids, among others. Medicines, including veterinary products, ranked third.

The data also show rising Brazilian imports from Asian countries with Muslim majorities or significant Islamic populations. In addition to Indonesia—whose shipments to Brazil increased 82.2% from 2019 to 2025—Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan also posted notable gains. Combined Brazilian imports from those five countries nearly doubled, rising from $1.49 billion in 2019 to $2.97 billion last year.

Source: Valor International

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