Electronic Components in Brazil?

Heya guys,

I'm a guy living in Porto Alegre Brazil... I can't find anywhere some of the electronics I need for my projects around here. And paying over U$ 80 for a bunch of components (plus ridiculous 78% of taxes) isn't something I want to do if I buy via Mouser/Digikey.
So, do you guys (any Brazillians around?) knows a good place I can find the kind of components we use, here in Brazil? Or maybe a online store with a cheaper shipping?

Thx in advance!
Regards.

PM'd

I ship to Brazil but would like to ask What is operation Red Tide
Received this yesterday by email:


Delays in Shipments to Brazil



Packages being shipped to Brazil may experience longer than typical delivery times, sometimes as long as 120 days, due to backlogs and delays in customs. Stricter import controls are being applied by the Brazilian government as it conducts Operation Red Tide, the country’s largest ever anti-fraud operation for trade. The operation will reportedly continue through September.




Steve @ Apex Jr.

Interesting name choice... there was a drug interdiction program back in 2000 named that.

They say it is to catch people cheating customs duties, but custom inspection slow downs have been used in other countries to affect trade selectively.

I don't follow Brazil closely enough to read between the lines.  But it seems pretty extreme, unless they are actually finding a high fraction that are cheating.

JR

I have heard that Brazil imposes 100% tax on transformers, to protect and grow its own transformer industry. Brutal, but otherwise Brazil might continue to be an agricultural economy, doomed to be exploited by all the world's crops-brokers, never getting out of relative poverty.

Such import tax probably should not apply to items which are not, and will not, be made locally. Hi-Fi audio transformers are the example I was cited. But to the customs man, iron is iron, he can't know what's a global commodity and what's special, such as Hammond or Electra Print.

PRR said:

But to the customs man, iron is iron

Click to expand...

Exactly! That's the problem! If there was something beneficial behind those stupid taxes and transparency in our government I would love consuming my local stuff... But there is none!!! And thus, I'm forced into paying something extremelly abusive that ain't being used the correct way and nor are the taxes there for the right 'cause. I lack english writing abilities to try describing how furious and disappointed I am with our importing/exporting policies.

Anyways, still looking for a place I could get my stuff without having to pay ridiculous taxes... Low cost shipping or something similar.

Thx again.

APEX JR. said:

I ship to Brazil but would like to ask What is operation Red Tide

Click to expand...

Let me put this way...
They are trying to steal as much money they can from anything coming into Brasil, and if they can't, then they'll make you hate buying stuff from somewhere else...

But I don't mind waiting, I just want to find a way into finishing (with quality) my DIY projects other than waiting random number of months 'till a good spirited friend of mine travels anywhere else where I can buy something and send his way so he can bring it my way... Ya... Painful.

Thx

Ship to an overseas friend. Have them repackage it so it looks old and bad. Have them send it as a gift. Shhh.

Ya, the problem is finding someone for the job.

PRR said:

But to the customs man, iron is iron.....

Click to expand...

Sounds like Brazil is where we were 30 years ago. Auckland (which at the time had a population of <1million)
had 6 factories producing colour TV sets, this madness being protected by vicious tarriffs and sales taxes.
Silly customs anomoly :
Hifi gear had a 30% sales tax
Car parts (as cars were deemed a luxury item) were also 30%
Electronic test equipment (deemed essential for industry) was 0%
Oscilloscopes therefore were zero rated.
Signal Generators, however, were 30%
Why ??????????????????????????????
Because generators, as everyone knows, are parts of cars.
There was NO changing it.
M

mobyd said:

PRR said:

But to the customs man, iron is iron.....

Click to expand...

Sounds like Brazil is where we were 30 years ago. Auckland (which at the time had a population of <1million)
had 6 factories producing colour TV sets, this madness being protected by vicious tarriffs and sales taxes.
Silly customs anomoly :
Hifi gear had a 30% sales tax
Car parts (as cars were deemed a luxury item) were also 30%
Electronic test equipment (deemed essential for industry) was 0%
Oscilloscopes therefore were zero rated.
Signal Generators, however, were 30%
Why ??????????????????????????????
Because generators, as everyone knows, are parts of cars.
There was NO changing it.
M

Click to expand...

Yup, protectionism is always a zero sum game at best, and a leaky ship in practice. Rather than protecting jobs like they argue, it mainly protects the cronies who run un-competitive industries and have influence to control the levers of government. Free trade creates wealth for both sides, while it disproportionately helps the developing nations. The mature economies need to pedal harder to remain competitive with the new hungry competitors.

Regulation is another way to protect cronies or established players from new competition. I saw an article about street drummers in Turkey needing to pass a test and be certified by a governing board before they can drum in the streets.  8)

JR

> Signal Generators, however, were 30%
> Because generators, as everyone knows, are parts of cars.

JR may have missed this point in his otherwise wise rant about free trade.

> Regulation is another way to protect cronies or established players from new competition.

Never attribute to cronyism what can be explained by clerical stupidity. Generators is for cars.

> 6 factories producing colour TV sets

Modestly absurd. Did NZ ever seriously try car production?

I said Brasil could try to become an industrial nation. This won't really happen in NZ. Local market is too small for the economy-of-scale industries like cars (or TVs), steel, etc. Shipping costs on export are significant. The labor is not rich but won't work in labor camps.

NZ will thrive on the stuff NZ is good for. I live in the Pine Tree State, but the better pine trim-boards here say "Produced in New Zealand". Huh?? Why can I be getting wood from the other side of the world instead of from 30 miles up the road? Well, the Maine timber racket has many problems, from annoying road limits to high energy cost to un-fair-trade from the north and lack of spunk. Obviously someone in NZ has put together the trees and the mills and the shipping and pounded sales in the US. Also dairy and wine and tourism.

Brazil has 25 times the population of New Zealand. In fact Brazil's population is now equal to the USA in 1960, when the USA could do almost anything and largely on domestic consumption. Many in Brasil are quite poor but there is solid wealth. Brazil is the world's tenth largest energy consumer, always a strong sign. They make some fine airplanes. They make 3 million cars a year. If not for the price-cutting Chinese, Brasil could be a significant steel products exporter.

Would Brazil be "richer" if they dropped all import tax? Short-term, goods would be cheaper and material standard of living would rise. 10 Chinese shirts instead of 7 Brazilian shirts, a 2.5L Kia instead of a 1.4L Agile. But many production jobs would be lost overnight. Many more as healthy local industries sicken from lack of the infrastructure around large industries. Come here and I'll show you the defunct machine-shops. Someone tells me that in Brazil there are storefront transformer winders who can repair (or make) common power transformers. Have not seen that in the US in decades.

I think there comes a time, when agriculture has peaked and industry is just getting started, when import restrictions (always implemented as cash to the government!) might make economic sense. Of course such policy persists long after free-trade would be wiser (cash to the gov is hard to kick).

Never forget that the US once had no income tax and nearly all the dough to run the government came from drug tariffs (export taxes on rum and tobacco).

Transformer winding is not rocket science (another field where Brazil is doing better than you'd expect for a bunch of farmers). Power and Output trannies are all wound on the same iron. Wire is wire. Get a Local Industry start-up grant. Get one Hammond and copy it inside the country for sale far below the import cost.

PRR said:

> Signal Generators, however, were 30%
> Because generators, as everyone knows, are parts of cars.

JR may have missed this point in his otherwise wise rant about free trade.

Click to expand...

No JR saw that but didn't want to veer into bureaucratic incompetence, as I routinely have to deal with shipping a product around the world that doesn't neatly fit into a customs duty category (electronic drum tuner).

> Regulation is another way to protect cronies or established players from new competition.

Never attribute to cronyism what can be explained by clerical stupidity. Generators is for cars.

Click to expand...

My take on Moby's post was about misguided protectionism, with the generator icing on the cake for unintended consequences.  I do not mean to put words in his mouth.

> 6 factories producing colour TV sets

Modestly absurd. Did NZ ever seriously try car production?

I said Brasil could try to become an industrial nation. This won't really happen in NZ. Local market is too small for the economy-of-scale industries like cars (or TVs), steel, etc. Shipping costs on export are significant. The labor is not rich but won't work in labor camps.

Click to expand...

Alps used to manufacture potentiometers for US and perhaps europe in Brazil (years ago, before the rise of China). I recall one serious investigation back at my old day job , to basing some speaker and simple electronics manufacturing down there with a local partner (project abandoned).

NZ will thrive on the stuff NZ is good for. I live in the Pine Tree State, but the better pine trim-boards here say "Produced in New Zealand". Huh?? Why can I be getting wood from the other side of the world instead of from 30 miles up the road? Well, the Maine timber racket has many problems, from annoying road limits to high energy cost to un-fair-trade from the north and lack of spunk. Obviously someone in NZ has put together the trees and the mills and the shipping and pounded sales in the US. Also dairy and wine and tourism.

Brazil has 25 times the population of New Zealand. In fact Brazil's population is now equal to the USA in 1960, when the USA could do almost anything and largely on domestic consumption. Many in Brasil are quite poor but there is solid wealth. Brazil is the world's tenth largest energy consumer, always a strong sign. They make some fine airplanes. They make 3 million cars a year. If not for the price-cutting Chinese, Brasil could be a significant steel products exporter.

Click to expand...

Brazil is a pioneer in alternate fuels (cane based ethanol) and manufactured their own flex fuel cars.  IIRC years ago, they had their own different standard for TV, which prevented use of cheaper imported TV built for other broadcast standards.

Brazil has made huge government investment in energy (which is needed for economic growth) through Pertrobras. They are currently developing one of the largest deep water (oil) finds in partnership with several drillers and oil companies. They could already export cane based ethanol to us at a healthy profit.

Would Brazil be "richer" if they dropped all import tax? Short-term, goods would be cheaper and material standard of living would rise. 10 Chinese shirts instead of 7 Brazilian shirts, a 2.5L Kia instead of a 1.4L Agile. But many production jobs would be lost overnight. Many more as healthy local industries sicken from lack of the infrastructure around large industries. Come here and I'll show you the defunct machine-shops. Someone tells me that in Brazil there are storefront transformer winders who can repair (or make) common power transformers. Have not seen that in the US in decades.

I think there comes a time, when agriculture has peaked and industry is just getting started, when import restrictions (always implemented as cash to the government!) might make economic sense. Of course such policy persists long after free-trade would be wiser (cash to the gov is hard to kick).

Click to expand...

I don't believe Brazil agriculture has come close to peaking. Last I heard there was still vast un/under-developed rich farmland. Brazil could become the breadbasket of So. America. 

Never forget that the US once had no income tax and nearly all the dough to run the government came from drug tariffs (export taxes on rum and tobacco).

Click to expand...

+1, Originally the US fed government ran completely on government "fees" charged for sundry services, not just tariffs  but all kinds of fees for government documents to perform international business. 

Transformer winding is not rocket science (another field where Brazil is doing better than you'd expect for a bunch of farmers). Power and Output trannies are all wound on the same iron. Wire is wire. Get a Local Industry start-up grant. Get one Hammond and copy it inside the country for sale far below the import cost.

Click to expand...

Brazil is more advanced and modern than we are giving it credit for. The current government may just be trying to defend it's currency relative to others in the short term by discouraging imports.  If centralized industrial policy could anticipate and meet all the needs of consumers, there wouldn't be any imports to delay.  8) 

JR

So,

some1 have any other suggestions I could try looking for?

Do the same tariffs apply to resellers? Maybe it's a business opportunity. You can't be the only one who needs this stuff.