the 80% tax on electronics since the 80s was because brazil had a few chip foundries.
two of them started cloning cpus designs (8080 and 68k iirc). they sold well all over the (1st and 2nd) world (still no local market). until one company did a publicity stunt lying they had a full mac clone (it was an actual mac, but they did have something else).
then apple and others pressured the US state department, which pressured the brazilian gov with tarifs on oranges (most of the new elite created in the millitary coups were now big land owners and orange was the cash crop). They were so afraid of the tarifs that they closed both factories as requested, and added the import tax as a good will gesture on top!
and many (30%) brazilians today think another military coup will sort things out
Forgive me, I'm unclear on one thing -- the import tax was added as a goodwill gesture? To whom? I mean, who was this done to placate? Not the US companies, and not the closed factories, right?
I was going to snidely ask what Argentina's excuse was for its import tax on electronics, but it's been a decade since I lived there, and it appears they dropped the tariff to zero at the start of this year (2026). Really, talk about holding your economy back for the wrong reasons: Making it wildly expensive for people to get the tools they need to bring money into the local economy. Besides, all it did was open a black market.
Did you guys got your eletronics from Paraguay too?
I wish we replace this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_to_the_Duke_of_Caxias with a statue of a smuggler bringing computers from paraguay (they where sold two streets down this statue). It is much more heroic and positive outcome symbol to the country than some old military nobody on a horse.
Haha that's not a bad idea for a statue ;)
I'm a US citizen so it wasn't that bad for me unless I needed replacement parts without physically traveling to get them. We would just trade gifts of laptops with people when anyone was going to the US, but nothing in new packaging. At that time IIRC there was a $500 limit on how much Argentines could spend on a bank card outside the country for the entirety of a trip abroad, and obviously cash controls to prevent taking cash out and import controls on anything you brought in. The normal pattern for rich Argentines was to go to Miami and open a US bank account, then use that to buy stuff and bring it into the country in your suitcase. Fueling that US bank account was where things got very interesting (and also was the best use case I've seen for cryptocurrency, where someone in BsAs would take your cash, buy local Bitcoin with it, send the Bitcoin to their partner in Miami, who would change it to USD and deposit it in your bank account there). It was a clever economy.
Heh, Northern Spaniards as me would have a longass trip to Andorra to get tax-free devices. And some people in the Castilles/Galicia did the same... in Portugal.
I've never been to Andorra but it seems very strange, like a few streets shopping mall / free trade zone?? I've heard from Spaniards about going there and they said it's not a good place to go on vacation lol
It was a place to get cheap electronics, tobaco and alcohol because of being a tax haven. OFC it was forbidden to get an amount of goods over an X quantity because you could have been fined as a smuggler.