Anyone who’s ever gone on vacation in a country with cheap prices has heard some variation of the following advice: Go with your suitcases empty. Buy everything there and then bring it all back. Favorable exchange rates and developing economies can make everything cheap, much cheaper than you’d find back home.

It’s a fascinating trend in travel and always makes me picture excited tourists hauling their suitcases out of the closet, setting them on the bed, and then packing them with nothing but air. (Then I wonder, why not just buy new suitcases on vacation, too?)

But there’s a strange way it’s playing out in Brazil. Rather than heading to Cambodia, China, or Bangladesh where many low-cost consumer goods are made,