Geopolitics of the unknown
Former Ecuadorian President R. Correa, now a refugee in RT, interviewed Evo Morales on his fall from the government:i“Do you think lithium is of great importance in this problem?
Morales: “I'm very sure ...”
Summing up Morales, the coup was because “some industrialized countries” -as he said- do not want Bolivia to define the international price of lithium -once industrialization has been completed-, nor do they want to face Bolivian technological competition. They don't want development to come from the field of socialism.
The fulfillment of industrialization, technological competitiveness, the power to establish the world price of lithium and ….socialism. ...It feels good, but what if my feelings were wrong and none of this had been underway? Lets see.
In order to amplify Morales’s “I'm very sure” a press-note commenting the interview shot this:
“Companies that manage to get a hold of Bolivia’s lithium stocks – estimated at around 900 million tons – stand to make a lucrative profit”ii
Name those companies!!
They can't.
The company that came closest to get a hold on Bolivia's lithium stocks was ACISA, and you saw what happened with it. With respect to those reserves, if the companies that made these gigantic estimates have no name, then they don’t exist, nor do those mammoth reserves either. Comments aside, according to the YLB the certified lithium reserves in the de Uyuni Salt lake are 21 million metric tons.iii
The brand-new Bolivian cars against the transnationals of the sector
The fall of Morales would have caused a stir in the stock exchanges:“...on Sunday, November 9, the shares of the American company TESLA, ..., increased exponentially, a trend that continued these days.”iv
That is not possible, the stock market is clossed on sunday!. Let's take it from Friday (8/11), when Tesla got 337.14. On Monday (11/11) it jumped to 345.09; but on 11/29 the numbers fell to 329.94, less than in the beginning. So, there is no exponential increase.
There is also no correlation with what happened in Bolivia. The fall of 11/29 occurred without Morales returning to power. From the point of view of the market nothing happened. Bolivian lithium exports are so modest that the market would not feel its absence.
Anyway, as Jalife puts it, Anglo-Saxon mining transnationals in the United States and Canada, were irritated by:
“... the launch of the fully Bolivian-made Quantum electric car: a partnership of the state-owned Bolivian Lithium Deposits (YLB) with Quantum Motors”.v
Carlos Soruco, the director of Quantum Motors has a different version:
"...Quantum Motors is a purely private initiative,... the Bolivian State has nothing to do with us."vi
We have to admit that the guy who makes the car knows better than Jalife who makes the car.
But what about geopolitics?
Soruco accepts that lithium may have some geopolitical influence, but he does not believe that there is:
“... a conspiracy of the automobile industry against them (Quantum cars) because their model is low speed, mainly intended for urban use and do not compete with normal cars.”vii
Let's add the scale too. The first launch of the cars consisted of 50 units and the second will be 120. Manufacturers expect to reach a stable production of 200 units per month, in the futureviii, or 2400 per year. That's about 6 cars / day against 13,400 cars / day produced by Toyota in Japan.ix
As you can see, there were not enough reasons for multinationals to get mad at Quantum, much less at the Bolivian government because it had nothing to do with car production, proof of that is that they barely had enough batteries available for the new cars.
Batteries for the first 50 Quantum cars were imported from Chinax, and the next delivery of the vehicle will also have imported lithium batteries.xi A press headline expressed this paradoxical situation:
“The Quantum, the Bolivian electric car has to import its lithium batteries”.
It was only on 3/10/19 that YLB signed an agreement to supply lithium batteries to Quantun. But they can not produce more than 20 batteries per month,xii which means 10 cars, one for each year of the YLB battery project elapsed life.
Next:
Part III, “The curse of extractivism”
NOTES
i
"El litio jugó un factor importante en el golpe de Estado".
RT, Conversando
con Correa, 12/11/19
ii
“Bolivian coup was all about the lithium & OAS had a hand in
it, ousted president Morales” RT, 21/11/19
http://tinyurl.com/yx6969j4
iii
“Certifican que Bolivia tiene la mayor reserva de litio del
mundo”. Los tiempos/ABI, 22/02/2019
http://tinyurl.com/revz28z
iv
Agustina Sánchez: “Detrás del Golpe: la industrialización del
litio en Bolivia”. clacso.org, 15/11/19
http://tinyurl.com/r6gpob9
v
Alfredo Jalife Rahme : “El litio-golpe de Bolivia con la bendición
de la OEA y Estados Unidos”. kaosenlared.net, 18/11/19
vi
Rafael Cereceda: “El Quantum, el automóvil eléctrico boliviano
tiene que importar sus baterías de litio”. euronews.com,
22/11/2019
vii
Rafael Cereceda: Op.
Cit.
viii
“Quantum Motors: Estas son las características del primer carro
eléctrico hecho en Bolivia” Página Siete Digital, 26/9/19
ix
toyota.co.jp
http://tinyurl.com/ua6ajcv
x
“Quantum, el auto eléctrico “made in Bolivia”. El Diario,
30/9/19
http://tinyurl.com/tufa5m7
xi
Rafael Cereceda: Op.
Cit.
xii
“Garantizan mayor autonomía para los vehículos Quantum”.
OPINION/ ABI 7/10/19