Countries on the list need to have a Free Trade Agreement (FTA)...

Countries on the list need to have a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the USA (see list below).

Note, America’s free-trade pacts don’t cleanly overlap with its list of security allies: The U.S. has free-trade agreements with Australia, Canada, and Mexico, for instance, but not with Japan, South Korea, Germany, or the United Kingdom. Hence, countries need to egotiate with the USA if they want to get on the list.

Despite Indonesia not being on the list, the IRA is still very good for Indonesia and other developing ecconomies due to spillover effects of lower energy costs.” Over the past decade, China and Europe have driven most of those spillover effects: They’re chiefly responsible, for instance, for the tenfold decline in solar prices that has helped fuel that technology’s explosive growth around the world. Now the IRA might fuel a huge boom in supply and demand from the U.S., driving further declines.

In the Indonesian economy, those cost declines are crucial, because the cost of energy must be kept low as the country industrialises. One of Indonesia's biggest concerns is that the cost of energy will be too high and cause the loss of competitiveness. The IRA will result in lowering the cost of wind, solar, batteries, and other crucial technologies for decarbonising. That would make them easier for poorer countries to purchase and eventually help them to transition to clean energy, albeit at a slower pace then developed ecconomies.

But to the point you are probably getting at, the IRA doesn't make it more likely Tesla would want to put a gigafactory in Indonesia (Aside: there are many other reasons Tesla might not want to set up in Indonesia, but off topic). The IRA is really designed to encourage companies to set up in the USA, and recent anouncements, like Tesla looking into setting up a hydroxide facility on the gulf coast of Texas, is an indication companies are taking notice.

Because the IRA is in effect subsidising the production of the cost of batteries, this is very good for WA spod producers as it allows more wriggle room in material cost inputs. All imo.



Footnote: Latest Global Lithium Podcast well worth a listen. Interview with a very knowleable Chemical Engineer from Piedmon who has a long history in the industry. Towards the end of the podcast he talks about hard rock v's brine and DLE. He thinks lepidolite resources requires at least US$2000/tonne, so incentive pricing will need to remain at least US$3000/tonne, even in a downturn. He said he doesn't expect Piedmont to be online until 2026 but he's not worried about missing the high prices. Very confident they are here to stay well beyond 2026. Very good for us. The only caution is he said he doesn't know of one project that ever managed to come online on-time. Fingers crossed our team can be the first.

G