Milei has openly declared that he "would not allow the country to join the bloc of emerging economies led by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa." "Milei, who has already said he won’t trade with “communist” nations (a label he says applies to Brazil and China) said he doesn't want to deal with nations governed by the left in general."I'm not going to push for deals with communists because they don't respect the basic parameters of free trade, freedom and democracy, it's geopolitics," said Milei". See the link below for the full article - including that quoted above. BRICS membership in doubt as opposition rejects move | Buenos Aires Times (batimes.com.ar)
Milei's views on BRICS membership and trading with China should also be a boost to Argentina's chances of having closer ties to the US and being included in the MSP....which has been something that has been worked on in the background for quite some time now. David Dickson has already mentioned that this has been one of his focus areas of late - as per his comments in Lake's webinar of 28/9/23...... "So, in the last month, I’ve been kind of all over, we spent most of the one week in Washington DC….where not only did we meet with the US Government, but also we met with people from the Canadian Government, UK Government. They’re really looking at, with organizations such as MSP, how does this Kachi project become kind of prominent in the whole DLE sector - so they will continue to progress on that."
For those that are unaware of what the MSP is..... I have copied the latest speel on the MSP here for reference: "MSP is a strategic grouping of 13 member states including Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, US, the European Union, Italy and now India. It aims to catalyse public and private investment in critical mineral supply chains globally." These Countries have grouped together to form the MSP in an effort to secure supply chains for critical minerals such as Lithium - which are now seen as critical to National Security. If Argentina were to join the MSP group (which negates the need for the US and Argentina to implement a fully-fledged FTA), they will be able to qualify for things like the full concessions under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in the US. They will also have doors opened to them for further funding from the likes of the US Department of Energy (DOE) - which has the capability to invest directly in projects overseas that are deemed critical for supporting their supply chains. If you research the MSP, you’ll see that they are looking to identify 16 Lithium projects globally that will become a part of MSP. Now, have another read of David's comment highlighted in green above. The MSP discussions also open the door for other entities to become involved in the debt component of the project financing. There has been a lot of dialogue on this prior to the election but things will now be able to move forward now that the election result has been finalised. Watch this space!
Additionally, as per David Dickson's commentary in the last webinar on 31/10/23... ".....in my time in Argentina meeting with government and with opposition parties, I've never heard anything from any of these parties where anyone has been negative in regards to the lithium sector. I think there's a realisation that lithium, as a natural resource in Argentina, is an opportunity for the Country to generate some revenue. So, from that aspect, we're not sitting here as Lake Resources being really concerned about what's going to happen. What's more important….what did occur during the last week or so in the election in the province of Catamarca, is that there was a clear winner and that was with the incumbent Governor Jalil - with who we at Lake Resources have a very good relationship. Governor Jalil has visited our site on many occasions. He's a big supporter of what we're doing - particularly with regards to the ESG element. So, from that aspect, I think where we have the relationship in Argentina at the Provincial level (or in the Province) it is going to continue. For us I think that was more important than what's actually happening there at a Federal level. So very happy with this."
All up, it is too early to tell exactly how this election result will influence things around the Kachi (and other) projects......but, as we can see from the snippets above, it is certainly not all bad news!
LKE Price at posting:
16.0¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)