ZÁRATE, Argentina — Argentina is receiving its first shipload of Chinese electric and hybrid vehicles after President Javier Milei’s government opened the market further to imports, Associated Press reported.
More than 5,800 electric and hybrid vehicles sat on the deck of the BYD Changzhou on the day unloading began at a river port in eastern Argentina. The first shipment arrived at Zárate Port on Monday after a 23-day voyage from Singapore, with Wednesday’s unloading marking the next step of the delivery.
In Argentina, such an influx was described as unprecedented for the country’s recently tighter trade environment. For years, Kirchnerism—a movement associated with former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her late husband, former President Néstor Kirchner—had been linked to stiff tariffs and import restrictions, a policy approach that helped keep the economy relatively closed, the reporting said.
Claudio Damiano, a professor at the Institute of Transportation at Argentina’s National University of San Martin, said the shipment carried a symbolic weight as the first stage of BYD’s entry. “For decades people in Argentina had this vision that everything here must be manufactured here,” Damiano said, adding, “The boat has a symbolic value as the first step for BYD. Everyone’s wondering how far it will go.”
Damiano also contrasted the Argentine scene with European politics over Chinese car competition. “For the Europeans, there’s just no possibility of competing with the Chinese,” he said. The shipment arrived as European Union lawmakers, in Brussels, voted Wednesday to delay ratification of a free trade deal between the EU and the Mercosur group of South American countries, according to the same reporting.
The AP story said Milei, who took office in 2023 after voters moved past years of economic crisis, has pursued sweeping changes intended to reduce barriers to foreign goods. Over the last two years, the reporting said his government slashed trade barriers, unwound customs red tape, and shored up the local currency to make imports more affordable.
The shift has been tied in the reporting to a sharp jump in imports, with Argentina recording a record 30% increase in imports compared with the year before. The article cited examples of consumer goods appearing at homes through online retailers, and said Chinese automakers are now taking advantage of a policy allowing 50,000 electric and hybrid cars into the country this year tariff-free.
Milei made the case for the direction of his reforms while speaking in Davos, Associated Press reported. He told the World Economic Forum that his deregulation measures “allow us to have a more dynamically efficient economy,” and described his push as linked to Trump’s political brand, saying: “This is MAGA, ‘Make Argentina Great Again.”
While Milei and Trump have been described as sharing alignments on culture-war issues and skepticism toward multilateral institutions, the reporting said differences surfaced during their discussions of political priorities. It also said China has perhaps benefited most from Milei’s freer trade drive: the article reported Chinese imports to Argentina surged over 57% last year compared with the year before, and it said Chinese investment has flowed into Argentina’s energy and mining sectors.
At an event tied to Monday’s shipment, government spokesperson Javier Lanari said, “Argentina has rejoined the world,” and argued that vehicles associated with the previous era would soon be displaced. “Very soon, the Cuban-made vehicles left to us by Kirchnerism will be part of a sad and dark past.”
Still, the reporting described concerns from within Argentina’s auto sector and from abroad. Andrés Civetta, an economist specializing in the auto sector at the consulting firm Abeceb, said Chinese makers can meet the government’s price limits and concluded, “China has won the race.”
Pablo Naya, the creator of Sero Electric and described by the AP story as Argentina’s only domestic electric car maker, said he is “not worried.” He pointed to limits in infrastructure and service capacity, including the lack of dealers’ service centers able to undertake internal repairs if issues arise. Naya said that if Argentine infrastructure and consumer demand eventually catch up to Chinese supply, “Then that would get complicated for us,” adding, “We’d have a problem,” as he spoke from the Sero Electric factory in the Buenos Aires suburb of Castelar.