Serge Massa hung up the phone with Mauricio Claver Carone, the President of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). It was getting dark on Thursday on the fourth floor of the Palacio de Hacienda while it was dawning in Beijing where the Argentine ambassador, Sabino Vaca NarvajaI had listened to him, days before, very receptive, pragmatic and operational. “Give everything a handle,” they say the minister told him shortly before the oath. “Screw me, I need money.”
The green light on the agenda with China, confirmed at the two terminals, is targeting reserves, lithium and geopolitics. “money doesn’t smell”, ironically an adviser to the minister. Beyond jokes, he calls things by his name. “The alleged monopoly of Sergio’s relationship with the United States is just that, an assumption, just a good relationship.” And in a remix of the classic neither Yankees nor Marxists, he adds: “Sergio has a slogan, we play with everyone and we are not satellites of anyone.”
Sergio Massa’s hula hula
Moriah Casan He said it his way. To praise her son-in-law, she assured that “she has a waist, she does the hula hula”. In Beijing they do it their own way: “China plays as the wolf of Wall Street, it has a seat in the IMF, the World Bank and the Inter-American Bank, they are capitalists on the outside, but they have a scheme that is ordered inside by the Party” . China is thus one more wolf in the game, and the Party has the pen.
Massa did not mention China in his press conference on Wednesday. It was said that she goes looking for dollars in Washington, Europe and even exotic Qatar. But without saying it, she said something: she talked about lithium. China is one of the world’s great players with demands on its giant scale. Argentina, Bolivia y Chile they make up the Lithium Triangle: the first world reserve of a strategic resource and a board that worries the United States.
What are the new minister’s plans? “We need foreign currency and we have lithium. Y Lithium is not just for ‘America’ or Canada: It is a central strategic resource that obviously today has plenty of opportunities and we will work with those who bring us the best investment projects”. With a message to several bands, they also add: “It’s an opportunity. It is not reserved for anyone. And we don’t want the same thing to happen as with soybeans: primarization of the economy. We want to sell added value: batteries, but not only, also cars, electromobility devices, motorcycles, cars”.
The pilgrimage to Beijing
Massa’s relationship with China is not new. He has some postcards. In 2015, the Congress, with the Senate chaired by Amado Boudou and Deputies by Julián Domínguez, opened a dialogue with the National Assembly of the People’s Republic of China, the highest body of legislative government. The dialogue continues to this day and was live with Massa in Deputies. There is another photo. In 2017 Massa visited Beijing, Shanghai y Shenzhen. He was a common deputy, he had broken bridges with Mauricio Macri and for China he was an aspiring president. He stayed in a hotel controlled by a young woman, they complained about being unpunctual, he had to travel long stretches from one point to another and admired Shanghai: “a very capitalist city – they say next to him – with huge skyscrapers that has nothing to do with envy New York.”
There was a photo. Real. With the wall of Great Hall of the People in the background, inside a building located on the west side of the imposing Tiananmen Square where the Government of the People’s Republic and the Communist Party celebrate their protocol festivities. Massa did not have gray hair. Malena was dark. And next to it, the team that still accompanies him: José Ignacio de Mendiguren, Martín Redrado and Gustavo Martínez Pandiani, a career diplomat and historical adviser to massism on international issues.
The flight to “the most regulated country on the planet”, as they say, it sought to touch three lifelines: the economic system and the double political system, the Government and the Party, the true Chinese power. The Renovating Front and the Chinese PC signed an agreement: “Imagine, between David and Goliath”, releases his team. Then there was no more. They boarded the plane back. In full return, yes: Redrado turned red when the portals gave the news of the romance with Luisana Lopilato.
The tour had an important result some time later. In May of last year, during the negotiation with the FMI. The still president of Deputies sat down in front of a screen. On one side, Máximo Kirchner, still president of the FdT bloc, and on the other, Germán Martínez. They met via videoconference with Li Zhanshu, president of the powerful Chinese People’s Assembly, a body with 1,200 congressmen, but important, above all, because its president is also third in the structure of the Chinese CP. That was the first international political support, from a heavyweight, that Argentina received for the agreement. It is not a minor fact. China appeared when “no one wanted to show their faces”, they recognize around the minister.
Argentina has major projects with China. 10 within the framework of the Strategic Dialogue for Coordination and Economic Cooperation: nuclear power plant, dams, railways, section II gas pipeline and electrical networks. And 14 in La Franja y La Ruta, the name that renewed the Silk Road: water treatment plants, aqueducts, bridges and road works. Part of that is the lithium route. Massa’s arrival at the Palacio de Hacienda was celebrated. “Okay,” they said as soon as the news spread. “It didn’t make sense for Economy to not manage the relationship with the multilateral credit organizations and the Banks”, which Gustavo Beliz had until then. “I think now everything is going to be much more dynamic.”
lithium fever
In December 2021, Matías Kulfas created the Lithium table: a work table with chairs for three provinces, Catamarca, Jujuy and Salta and a chair for Nation. The NOA provinces form the mini lithium triangle, an area integrated into the true Lithium Triangle with Chile and Bolivia. The Table worked to find common policies, and works in subcommittees: environment, infrastructure, taxes, technology. There are differences with Bolivia and Chile. Bolivia nationalized its production although it still does not produce. Chile produces low, and Gabriel Boric also has the idea of nationalizing it. Argentina has another scheme. Since the constitutional reform of Menem, the provinces are owners of their natural resources. In this case of lithium. And there are some problems there.
Lithium is the new gold. The new Dead Cow. Generates fever. And explosion of investors. But: it is priceless and the governors have no money. That is to say: those coffers without money are the ones in charge of negotiating with investors agreements submitted to the pressure of the box. That now creates a problem: sometimes, lithium sales at a gift price, according to the ministry. Salta still does not produce. Jujuy and Catamarca already exploit one plant each. If the sale at a gift price is like that, that is one of the mouths of enormous bloodletting in the country.
The government has a project on the subject. Look at what Mexico did and announced last week: an agreement with Bolivia to regionalizar the production. Economy is now studying a similar model to promote with its two neighbors: Chile and Bolivia. The main advantage is muscles: The regionalization would generate a structure to set the price of lithium for the world and not depend on the price of the Chicago Stock Exchange as it happens with soybeans. Another advantage is the redesign from above to articulate the work with the provincial autonomies.
An enthusiast of the subject puts it this way: “We could fix the price of lithium in the world, we are the first lithium reserve in the world (the triangle). The theme is as always in the background for us. The constitutional reform of the 90s. With the provincial autonomies. That’s why it’s a process. Regionalizing could give you advantages, you can articulate even if you have different levels and then design a joint strategy. I think the same with food. Our region is a large food producer and the price of soybeans is decided in Chicago. It is part of a semi-colonial scaffolding. From which we must wake up if we want prosperity for our peoples”.
china is knocking on the door. In lithium he is already a great player. An example, Salta: of 14 projects underway, 4 are Chinese, 1 Korean, the rest are from the United States, France, Canada, England. But in addition, he promotes another project: the Bioceanic Corridor of Northern Argentina. Strategic for lithium. “By improving the passage to Chile we could have access to Chile’s deepwater ports and exit with the export of the northern regional economies through the Pacific. That means lowering logistics costs and time since now everything leaves through the port of Buenos Aires and Rosario. Leaving through Chile, the calculations are 20 days less than maritime freight; but also the deep water port allows to double the cargo and in the world where logistics is key, it becomes a central element”.
One of the most enthusiastic is Catamarca. This is how the deputy governor explains it to the Chinese company Zijin Mining, President Alberto Fernández and provincial authorities.
the red circles
At halftime, Massa has his own board: the red circle. Joseph Louis Manzano has lithium investments in Jujuy, the province of Gerardo Morales, political partner of the renovator. How much of that relationship plays into the socket game remains to be seen. Massa’s entourage maintains that businessmen are one thing and the government another: And those who raise their finger, they say, are friends of those who did business with Macri.
The United States also plays their game. the general Laura Richardson Days ago, the ghost of Moscow and Beijing stirred in the region. “The ‘lithium triangle’ is in this region,” he said. “There are many things this region has to offer,” he declared in Miami. China “is playing chess” and “prevalent” Russia “is playing checkers.” “I think they are there to undermine America, they are there to undermine democracies.”
The dialogue with Claver Carone is in this line but also the green light with China. The two faces of the Massa fuse. the hula hoopher mother-in-law would say.