This is a good example where import controls are obviously silly. Is Bolivia (pop 11M) going to have a domestic car industry? Does it make any sense to ship the raw materials for building a car 4000 meters up in the Andes instead of just shipping the car?
I assume it's as a source of tax revenue, not to protect a domestic car industry. The assumption is that in a very poor country these import duties fall on those able to afford them. But people want to roll...
Bolivia's population has increased sharply recently, while Sweden's has been growing much slower if at all. So historically Sweden doesn't look so small, and they share (somewhat) a labor and goods market with Germany, which has a huge domestic car industry and correspondingly offers the goods and services that car manufacturers need, and Denmark nearby, with shipping on the Baltic offering multiple excellent ports. Historically, in 1950 you have Sweden at 7M and Bolivia at 2.7M. Sweden is an outlier among small countries with its car industry thanks to all of these factors.
Additionally, while not all of Bolivia is mountainous, the sweltering tropical climate of the lowlands is not exactly germane to physical toiling in a factory building all day. And my point about labor resources includes diversion from other more worthy applications of the abilities of Bolivia's engineers: its domestic infrastructure (power/transport/water) is lacking and you can't import that. Sweden has had a long time to build a power grid and rail system and enjoys less challenging geography.
Quite a few developing countries have similar laws. It’s all about the import fees/customs that can easily be an additional 100-200% over the cost of a new car. In many countries there would also be once-a-lifetime exemption cards for the equivalent of federal government employees or veterans (that are often sold on the black market for a tidy sum to a wealthy buyer looking to import a luxury vehicle).
Since the very old times custom taxes and transit fees made a significant portion of income for countries and kings. The "tax the rich" is not new, it was the way it worked: if someone has something, tax it as much as possible. If some people afford to pay for a car and the taxes, then what stops the government to set huge taxes? It looks more humane than confiscating their money.
Bolivia isn't entirely 4000 meters up in the Andes, and two thirds of it aren't in the Andes at all; the eastern lowlands are as low as 70 meters above sea level. They have a navigable river to the Pacific (the río Paraguay); you could ship in barges full of iron ore to Puerto Suárez. It would be a longer trip than crossing the Great Lakes to River Rouge, but it wouldn't involve any costly overland shipping at all. Moreover, it has very substantial domestic ore resources, though those do require overland shipping if not smelted at the mine*, and they are partly in the Andes.
I don't know much about Bolivia, but as I understand it, Bolivia's lack of domestic industry isn't due to its population or its lack of natural resources; it's caused by political factors such as profound social division, a resulting nonstop social struggle (including a socialist revolution in 01952), foreign subversion by agents like Che Guevara and the US CIA and DEA, a history of poverty rooted in Spanish colonialism and apartheid, counterproductive economic policies like the auto import tariff (directed toward the comprehensively failed experiment of import-substitution industrialization), and insufficient capitalism in general. Historically it also suffered from widespread illiteracy, but that is no longer a problem. Like, for example, Montana, it almost totally lacks research universities.
Normally I hesitate to attribute poverty and oppression to conspiracy theories like "CIA subversion", but in the case of Bolivia, the evidence seems indisputable that the CIA were key supporters of the ultra-right-wing military dictatorship in the 01960s and the 01971 coup, as well as operating their own military operations independently inside Bolivia.
The economic situation improved significantly during the Morales years.
Hopefully lccarrasco or someone can correct me if I got this wrong.
______
* As far as I know, they aren't currently smelting at the mines, but then again, they aren't currently mining iron either.
I once hitchhiked from Mexico city to Rio (had to take an airplane from Panama to Colombia).
During that trip I saw many Wonderful sights, and met many Wonderful people, but I also saw a lot of extreme poverty.
Even so, the poverty in Bolivia was worse.
They lost the war of the Pacific to Chile and Peru, which cost them valuable land and resources, and made them one of only two landlocked countries in south America (Paraguay is the other)
