A few interesting snippets from a recent article; not sure that the detail was posted here yet:
The brine is manna from heaven for Argentina, in the throes of economic crisis and almost entirely cut off from external funding. The country holds a fifth of global reserves, and Tesla’s Elon Musk is determined to get his hands on it before Chinese rivals lock up the lion’s share of future supply.
“He is extremely interested in our lithium and so is the government of the United States,” said President Javier Milei after a rapturous love-in with the technology tycoon and fellow libertarian last month at the Tesla headquarters in Texas. They met again this week to talk brass tacks at the Milken forum in Los Angeles.
The president’s circle has let it be known that Tesla may in return build a gigafactory and an EV manufacturing plant in Argentina’s central city of Cordoba as a base to export cars across South America’s Mercosur region. “We’ll welcome it with open arms,” said the Casa Rosada.
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Beijing could at any time restrict exports of refined lithium as a pressure tactic, much as it has weaponised gallium nitride over the last year.
Washington is belatedly fighting back, designating Argentina as the central pillar of a new ‘ally-shoring’ lithium strategy. It aims to build supply chains from trusted countries that “share the same democratic values as the US”.
The bureau maps out a plan to beat China at its own game by mobilising the US Development Finance Corporation and the Export-Import Bank to fund lithium projects and processing plants in Argentina directly.
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“Argentina has until now been a suffocating place to do things. It’s so protectionist it takes three months to get a new pump that I could in three days anywhere else. You couldn’t fire anybody if they weren’t pulling their weight. All this is going to go with Milei,”
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The lithium spot price is not what it was at the height of the bubble in 2022 when it reached $84,000 on the Chinese market, but be careful of the press narrative that lithium prices have since collapsed by 80pc.
Rollercoaster spot prices never reflected industrial reality since most lithium is purchased on long-term supply contracts.
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