Bolivia is finally a full member of the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) amid the skepticism of foreign trade experts. And no wonder. We entered a free trade zone like dwarfs in an NBA game. For example: our macroeconomic indicators (annual and per capita GDP, debt and deficit as a percentage of GDP) compete with Venezuela to be at the bottom of the six countries. In short, the exchange relations are not favorable to us.
With the end of the gas cycle (thank you Evo, thank you Lucho!) we have missed a great opportunity to play a leading role as the “gas hub” of the Southern Cone and we are left with only the unequal exchange, in terms of volume, prices and productivity of agribusiness and mining, apart from, of course, the sacred agrochemical industry (read: coca-cocaine) of the Chapare plains.
Moreover, an ideologically motivated government like ours should not feel very comfortable in the company of three countries that see the world differently, another more pragmatic than left-wing, and yet another unbalanced.
Some analysts ask rhetorically: what have we gotten from MERCOSUR – other than including ourselves in other free trade agreements of dubious utility – that we haven’t received from the anachronistic Andean Community of Nations (CAN)?
Thanks to mistakes, carelessness and omissions, we entered MERCOSUR weakened by having been excluded from the bi-oceanic corridor due to the insecurity and poor state (thank you, blocking brothers!) of our roads; also weakened by the self-exclusion of the bi-oceanic computing cable that was offered to us on a silver platter in 2019 by Chile and Brazil (and that the data cannot be blocked); Weakened lately also by our culpable delays in the international lithium business that we have not even entered.
But, as St. Paul says, in weakness is our strength! Yes, it is precisely lithium, the hopeful programme, mistreated to the brim and on the verge of failure, that can be the spearhead of our effective raison d’être in MERCOSUR.
Sooner or later, in fact, the Brazilian automotive industry will have to wake up to electromotricity, starting with the production of cathodes, batteries and low-cost electric cars aimed above all at the still virgin regional market. This is a unique opportunity for Bolivian lithium, considering that the other sides of the “triangle”, one – Argentina – has private production geared towards a foreign market, albeit with timid pretensions to industrialization, and the other – Chile – is not even part of MERCOSUR.
What is needed to explore and realize this possible cooperation of the MERCOSUR countries around Bolivian lithium and the future Brazilian electromotive industry? That the Ministry of Foreign Affairs negotiate a strategic alliance with the government and companies of Brazil, to supply quality lithium carbonate for batteries, which should be produced shortly, to the market of that country; incorporate Bolivian and international companies with great experience and size in the lithium chain into this alliance to ensure the proper development of the program; rehabilitate the railways needed to efficiently transport the thousands of tons of lithium carbonate that we will extract from the salt pans; to circumvent – as only the MAS can do with the law – the ideology that the Constitution has presumptuously implanted, contaminating mining with sectarian restrictions in the form of contracts and participation of private venture capital. And, last but not least, to use more strategic vision, and less “borsalino” hats and Andalusian folklore, in international relations. The opportunity to build the lithium chain in South America exists, but time is running out.