Latin American Auto Industry

In December 2024, a few weeks before Donald Trump was set to start his second presidential term, Jack Ewing, a New York Times journalist, met Estéban Alegría, a salesman at a recently established BYD dealership in the low-income suburb of Iztapalapa in Mexico City. Alegría was full of enthusiasm for the Dolphin Mini, one of the latest models imported from Chinese manufacturer BYD. The four-door compact car was selling in Mexico for the peso equivalent US$18,000, around US$10,000 less than the cheapest EV on sale in the US. Customers were desperate to get their hands on it. Alegría said his modest dealership was selling the cars as fast as they arrived from China. Ewing gave his take on the story by commenting: “Behind a crumbling brick wall in a working-class neighbourhood of Mexico City lurks a seemingly innocuous car lot. But it could be a sign of a potentially grave threat to the North American auto industry.”

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