Chinese Cars for Iranian Copper: How Sanctions Revived Barter Trade

Every few months, a consignment of car parts rolls off a production line in an industrial town on China’s mighty Yangtze River. The engines and chassis are sent to a different factory to be half-assembled into what is known as “knocked down” form, before being loaded into containers and shipped to their final destination: Iran.

But these half-built cars are not paid for in cash. Instead, they are exchanged for containers of Iranian copper and zinc to feed China’s vast metals industry.

The cars-for-metals trade, described to Bloomberg News by four people with knowledge of the situation, offers a rare insight into how an unprecedented ...