Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2663 actions· ✨ 89 recent

On 27 April 2026, US Assistant Secretary of State Caleb Orr and Bolivian Mining Minister Marco Antonio Calderón signed a Critical Minerals Memorandum of Understanding in Washington DC, establishing a non-binding cooperation framework targeting lithium, cobalt, and copper supply chains. The MoU is the first major bilateral economic instrument between the US and Bolivia since the 2008–09 expulsion of the US Ambassador, marking a strategic realignment by the post-Paz government toward Western investment partnerships. The agreement commits both governments to attract private-sector investment to Bolivia's critical-minerals endowment — including the Salar de Uyuni lithium resource (~21 Mt LCE, world's largest identified reserve) — as operational follow-through to Bolivia's February 2026 Critical Minerals Ministerial participation and the FORGE launch. It runs in parallel with Bolivia's domestic Proyecto de Ley del Litio (filed December 2025), which would open extraction-stage YLB operations to private partnership and introduce a progressive royalty structure.

On 4 February 2026, Argentina and the United States signed the Framework Instrument for Securing of Supply in the Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals at the inaugural FORGE Critical Minerals Ministerial in Washington, DC. The instrument commits both parties to cooperation across the critical-minerals supply chain — exploration, mining, processing, refining, and value-added manufacturing — with lithium and copper as the primary strategic targets given Argentina's position as the world's fourth-largest holder of lithium reserves and an emerging copper producer in the Salta, Catamarca, and San Juan provinces. The framework is one of eleven founding bilateral instruments signed simultaneously under the FORGE (Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement) architecture and operationalises the Trump-Milei strategic alignment as a binding supply-chain coordination instrument. Argentina's mining-export trajectory is projected to surpass USD 20bn over the next seven years under the combined RIGI + bilateral-framework investment pull.

On 14 January 2026 President Trump issued a Presidential Proclamation under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 titled "Adjusting Imports of Processed Critical Minerals and Their Derivative Products into the United States". Unlike the parallel 14 January 2026 semiconductor proclamation and the subsequent April 2026 pharmaceutical proclamation, the PCMDP proclamation does NOT immediately impose tariffs. Instead it directs the Secretary of Commerce and the U.S. Trade Representative to jointly negotiate bilateral and plurilateral supply agreements with trading partners, with an initial 180-day status report due 13 July 2026. The proclamation reserves residual authority to impose tariffs if negotiations fail or prove ineffective, and explicitly contemplates "price floors" on PCMDP imports as a negotiated instrument.

On 5 February 2026, USTR Ambassador Jamieson Greer and Argentine Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno signed in Washington the United States-Argentina Agreement on Reciprocal Trade and Investment (ARTI), formalising the framework jointly announced on 13 November 2025. The agreement is the first standalone bilateral trade-and-investment instrument concluded by the second Trump administration and the first FTA-style agreement signed under the post-IEEPA reciprocal-tariff architecture (Executive Order 14257, "Liberation Day"). On the US side, the ARTI sets out three tariff schedules: (i) Schedule 2A suspends additional reciprocal tariffs under EO 14257 for specified Argentine-origin goods (covering "unavailable natural resources" and non-patented pharmaceutical inputs); (ii) Schedule 2B grants a zero additional reciprocal tariff for designated Argentine agricultural products under EO 14360; and (iii) caps additional ad-valorem duties on other goods at 10% above MFN rates, inclusive of IEEPA reciprocal tariffs. On the Argentine side, illustrative tariff-rate quotas include duty-free access for 80,000 MT of US beef in calendar year 2026, 1,000 MT for cheese, 870 MT for almonds, 40 MT in-shell + 40 MT shelled for pistachios, 80,000 litres for wine (<2 L bottles), and preferential treatment for 10,000 motor vehicles meeting defined technical parameters. Argentina additionally commits to broader preferential market access on medicines, chemicals, machinery, information-technology products, medical devices, and a wide range of agricultural goods, alongside IP-enforcement upgrades (counterfeit/pirated-goods enforcement, patentability criteria, patent-backlog reduction, geographical indications) and investment-facilitation commitments that align Argentina's regime with US-preferred standards on regulatory cooperation, labour and environment.

On 11 April 2025 President Javier Milei signed Decreto de Necesidad y Urgencia 269/2025, published in the Boletín Oficial on 14 April 2025 (edición Nº 35.647). The decree repealed Decreto 28/2023, formally lifting the cepo cambiario — the foreign-exchange restrictions that had been in continuous operation in some form since November 2011. Operative provisions include elimination of the 80/20 export-proceeds-channelling mandate, removal of individual USD purchase and wire-transfer caps, permission for companies to repatriate post-1-January-2025 dividend profits, and replacement of the daily crawling-peg with a band float within a $1,000–$1,400 ARS/USD corridor with BCRA floor/ceiling intervention rules. The measure was coordinated with the IMF Extended Fund Facility (USD 20bn total; USD 15bn 2025 free-availability tranche) approved 11 April 2025, and operationalises the currency-stability guarantee embedded in the RIGI large- investment regime (Law 27.742, July 2024).

President Trump signed Executive Order 14241 on 20 March 2025 (Federal Register publication 25 March 2025) invoking Defense Production Act (DPA) Title III sections 301, 302, and 303 — and selected Title VII authorities — for domestic critical-mineral production, and delegated those authorities to the Chief Executive Officer of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC). The order operationalises the "national energy emergency" declared by EO 14156 (Jan 2025) to waive certain DPA §303 congressional-notification thresholds, designates "mineral production" as an Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment Program priority, expands the EO definition of "critical minerals" to include uranium, copper, potash, gold (and any further item designated by the Chair of the National Energy Dominance Council), and directs the Departments of the Interior, Energy, Treasury, and EXIM Bank to mobilise federal lands, permitting, and financing to expand US upstream and midstream capacity. EO 14241 is the cross-cutting domestic-mineral umbrella authority of the second Trump administration, paired with FY2025 supplemental appropriations (USD 2bn National Defense Stockpile, USD 5bn Industrial Base Fund) and complemented by the 24 April 2025 follow-on EO on offshore minerals and the 8 April 2025 coal amendment.

Signed by President Javier Milei and the entire cabinet on 20 December 2023 and published in the Boletín Oficial extraordinario on 21 December 2023, Decreto de Necesidad y Urgencia 70/2023 declares a public emergency across economic, financial, fiscal, administrative, pension, tariff, sanitary, and social matters until 31 December 2025 (Article 1) and enacts 366 articles across 16 titles that fundamentally restructure Argentina's regulatory framework. The DNU repeals or amends dozens of statutes to deregulate foreign trade (repealing the Compre Nacional buy-preference law Ley 18.875 and the price-control framework Ley 27.345), opens privatisation of state enterprises (Aerolíneas Argentinas, ENARSA, Banco Nación, Correo Argentino, Trenes Argentinos), dismantles the Ley de Abastecimiento price-control regime, liberalises civil aviation cabotage to foreign carriers, deregulates hydrocarbons export and mining permitting, and replaces the severance-pay regime with a capitalisation-fund system. It is the foundational enabling framework for all subsequent Milei-administration deregulatory instruments filed on the IPTM register, including RIGI (Law 27.742), Decreto 38/2025, Decreto 449/2025, and Decreto 563/2025.

Ganfeng Lithium (HKG:1772 / SZE:002460), China's largest lithium producer, has accumulated controlling interests in Argentina's most significant lithium brine operations through a series of transactions since 2019. The key assets are: **Cauchari-Olaroz (Jujuy Province):** Ganfeng holds 46.5% of the project alongside Lithium Americas Corp (53.5%), which commenced commercial production in mid-2023. It is Argentina's largest lithium brine operation, targeting 40,000 tonnes per year of battery-grade lithium carbonate. Ganfeng provides offtake for substantially all lithium carbonate produced and has rights to purchase Lithium Americas' share of output at market prices. **Pozuelos-Pastos Grandes (PPG) basin (Salta Province):** Ganfeng agreed in 2024-2025 to consolidate the PPG lithium basin through a new joint venture in which Ganfeng holds 67% and Lithium Argentina (spun off from Lithium Americas) holds 33%. The basin is one of Argentina's largest undeveloped lithium brine resources. The SEC filing confirming this consolidation was published in April 2025. Combined, Ganfeng's Argentine lithium position gives it a structurally significant share of Argentina's battery-grade lithium output and exploration pipeline — positioned within the lithium triangle alongside Chilean and Bolivian deposits but with operational production at Cauchari-Olaroz already running. The investments were financed through a combination of Ganfeng's corporate balance sheet and China Development Bank-linked project finance. Ganfeng has also established its own lithium hydroxide refining capacity in China fed from the Cauchari-Olaroz brine, creating a vertically integrated supply chain from Argentine salar to Chinese battery-grade product.