The Brazilian Ministry of Labor on Tuesday added Chinese electric vehicle (EV) giant BYD to a “dirty list” of employers who inflict slave labor conditions on their workers.
In December 2024, Brazilian officials halted the construction of a BYD factory in the city of Camacari after an investigation found that 163 Chinese nationals imported to work on the project were forced to live and work in “precarious” and “degrading” conditions, including unsafe working environments and unsanitary living quarters.
Furthermore, Brazil’s public prosecutor determined that BYD’s workers were treated as “forced labor,” with their passports confiscated and up to 70 percent of their pay withheld. The employees were threatened with heavy penalties if they tried to quit their jobs, including forfeiture of the wages withheld by their employer.
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Brazilian workers at the BYD plant told investigators their unfortunate Chinese counterparts were forced to work seven days a week, including on public holidays. The Chinese workers were only given time off when their supervisors knew government inspectors would be visiting the site.
BYD, which has become the world’s largest EV manufacturer with heavy backing from the Chinese Communist Party, pushed the blame for the Camacari debacle onto a contractor called the Jinjiang Group that was hired to provide labor for the construction project. The Jinjiang Group denied any wrongdoing.
In May 2025, the Public Labor Prosecutor’s office of Brazil (known in Portuguese as the Ministerio Publico do Trabalho, or MPT) filed suit against BYD, the Jinjiang Group, and another contractor called Tecmonta for human trafficking and slavery. The MPT sought about $50 million in damages from the Chinese companies.
The Ministry of Labor said on Tuesday that upon completion of “administrative processes” related to the Camacari investigation, BYD’s Brazilian branch has been added to the ministry’s Cadastro de Empregadores list. The name literally translates to “employer registration,” but it is more commonly known as the “dirty list” – a blacklist of employers who have been restricted from hiring in Brazil because they “subject people to conditions analogous to slavery.”
The blacklisting will prevent BYD from applying for some types of financing from Brazilian banks, and it will be seen as a major stain on the Chinese company’s reputation with investors, but it does not actually force BYD to suspend operations in Brazil.
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CNBC reported on Tuesday that BYD seemed taken aback by the blacklisting, because it had signed a pledge with the Brazilian government to change its labor practices and stop withholding compensation from its workers. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made a point of attending the inaugural ceremony for the controversial BYD plant in October to demonstrate his support for China.
BYD evidently failed to get the Ministry of Labor fully on board with its pledge of contrition, so the investigation of the Camacari plant kept going. Now that investigators have placed BYD on the dirty list, it must remain there for at least two years, unless a court orders its early removal.
Nikkei Asia noted the blacklisting comes at a precarious moment for BYD, which has enjoyed strong sales growth in Brazil — 100,000 cars sold in 2025, versus 76,000 the previous year — but is losing market share in China.
BYD’s last earnings report showed a 19-percent decline in annual net revenue, its first loss since 2021, coupled with the slowest overall growth in six years. The company poured a billion dollars into its “factory of the future” in Brazil, banking on continued overseas sales growth to make up for shortfalls in China.
The Chinese company might not be able to count on much help from Lula, who is locked in a tight re-election race against Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of Lula’s narrowly defeated 2022 opponent Jair Bolsonaro. Lula is a socialist who leans heavily on his background as a humble worker, so bending the rules to help a Chinese mega-corporation that has been blacklisted for forced labor would be politically difficult.
