INFOGRAPHIC: Weak demand, trade shifts create new dynamics in LatAm

This feature is part of a series setting the stage for the APLA conference in Mexico by exploring the scenarios for supply and demand of chemicals and polymers in Latin America for the rest of 2025. The previous story is here.

Chemical and petrochemical markets across Latin America faced significant challenges in 2025, creating new economic, trade and pricing dynamics across several countries.

Market participants from both the demand and supply sides have repeatedly seen high product availability, healthy stocks and faint end-consumer purchasing appetite. These factors are pressuring prices downwards in several polymer markets and grades.

Protectionist trade policies are also shifting product flows across all economies. Increasingly aggressive antidumping policies against North American material have significantly diminished the US's position in Brazil. However, domestic suppliers will unlikely benefit since Egypt and Colombia have instead covered the missing imports.

In a similar fashion, Asian polypropylene suppliers have lost ground in Mexico and Brazil, some of the biggest consumer markets in the region, since the first half of 2014. At the same time, their exports are steadily increasing in smaller economies, like Argentina, Perú, Ecuador and Paraguay, as overseas suppliers attempt to carve a bigger market share in Latin America.