77% of Chileans declare labor emergency while stock market climbs.

Employment has become the central fault line of the Chilean economy, and today the accumulated evidence reached a critical mass that is difficult to ignore: 77% of Chileans state that the country faces a "labor emergency," according to the Descifra-Artool survey published today, while the business sector presented concrete reform proposals and the IPSA closed higher above 11,000 points, riding on a dollar that is losing ground globally after weak data from the U.S. economy.

The convergence of signals is unusual. On one hand, the Chilean stock index benefited from the very data that unsettles Washington: U.S. GDP grew five-tenths below expectations, and PCE inflation — the indicator the Federal Reserve monitors most closely — also surprised to the downside. A weakened international dollar is, in the short term, a breath of relief for emerging markets and for the copper price. On the other hand, that same U.S. weakness comes at a moment when Chile is navigating a tariff dispute with Washington that escalated unnecessarily this week, when the Defense and Agriculture ministers of the José Antonio Kast government sharpened their public tone against the Trump administration's decision to raise tariffs to 12.5% for part of Chilean exports. Foreign Minister Francisco Pérez Mackenna had to step in to align the messaging and remind everyone that it is his office that leads the negotiating strategy — an episode that exposed internal tensions in a cabinet that, according to the U.S. ambassador, did not welcome the statements from its own ministers.

The labor front concentrates the greatest domestic pressure. The Santiago Chamber of Commerce warned this week that the sector has lost 25,000 formal jobs, attributing the phenomenon to the sustained rise in hiring costs. SOFOFA presented an agenda of five priority measures — among them the replacement of severance-by-years-of-service with an individual account, universal daycare coverage, and a four-percentage-point cut to the corporate tax — projecting that this package could create up to 210,000 additional jobs over four years. The Association of Insurers, meanwhile, added a distinct but related warning: the implementation timeline for the pension reform, particularly generational funds and the auction of the affiliate stock, could introduce unwanted volatility into the capital market. It's a signal that the financial ecosystem is watching with growing unease the pace at which structural reforms are piling up on an already sensitized market.

In that context, net fiscal debt hovering around 26.2% of GDP at the first quarter — four-tenths lower than at the close of the previous year, but close to highs since 1990 — describes a State operating on a narrow margin. The national reconstruction bill advanced another step in the Senate after Minister García Ruminot's rapprochement with UDI Senator Gustavo Sanhueza, although Senator Patricio Walker's vote remains uncommitted. The associated tax reform, which lowers the corporate tax, is the knot of a broader political debate: its critics point to a reduction in fiscal revenue for at least five years; its defenders — among whom SOFOFA has quantified the argument in greatest detail — maintain that the return in investment and employment more than offsets the short-term cost. Chile will also have to position that equation before the United Nations, where negotiations on the International Tax Cooperation Convention resume on August 3, arriving with its own committed fiscal balance target.

In the mining sector, the day delivered two significant signals. The new CEO of Anglo Teck for Chile, Dale Webb — currently Teck's Senior Vice President of Operations for Latin America — was formally appointed, with the merger scheduled between September 2026 and March 2027, consolidating a reconfiguration of the global copper map that will have direct effects on the supplier chain and mining employment in the north of the country. In parallel, Codelco's board received its 11 vice presidents in a meeting convened by CEO Jorge Gómez, a sign that changes are being prepared in the structure of the state-owned company, whose chairman Bernardo Fontaine ruled out today any opening of ownership to private investors or to the stock exchange. CPC chairwoman Susana Jiménez called privatization "politically impossible" but pointed to the need for major engineering in management. Chile and South Korea, meanwhile, relaunched the economic commission of their FTA — in force since 2004 — with explicit focus on collaboration in mineral resources, a bet that gains increasing relevance in a world competing to secure supply chains for the energy transition.

The Environmental Assessment Service approved projects worth nearly USD 20 billion in less than 150 days, out of a total portfolio of USD 99.793 billion under evaluation. It is the most concrete signal that the government is trying to unclog investment via the regulatory route, in line with the goal of reducing approval times by 30%. The alliance between CPC Biobío and SalmonChile to enable Carriel Sur airport as an export hub — the United States absorbs 40% of exported Chilean salmon — and the negotiations of the Puerto Exterior de San Antonio to secure financing with multilateral support without a state guarantee complete a picture of infrastructure moving forward, but with financing still uncertain.

Attention in the coming days will be divided across several simultaneous fronts: the final vote on the reconstruction bill in the Senate, where the government's margin remains minimal; the Fed meeting and the trajectory of the dollar, which will largely determine the copper price and pressure on the local exchange rate; the opening of fiscal negotiations at the UN; and the September deadline facing WOM to complete 90% of its 5G rollout committed before ICSID, amid persistent doubts about the company's operational viability. The labor market, meanwhile, shows no signs of structural relief: the Ipsos consumer confidence index rose just 0.8 points in July, its first consecutive increase of the year, but from a level of 42 points that still reflects an economy in which employment is, for most households, the variable that conditions everything else.

**Parque Arauco (Santiago: PARAUCO)** — The shopping center chain with operations in Chile, Peru and Colombia reported second-quarter revenues of $104.178 billion, a 17.9% increase driven by performance in the Andean markets, but net income attributable to the controlling shareholder fell 30.8% due to higher financial costs and a lower contribution from related companies. Ebitda in Colombia grew 28.1% and in Peru 21.9%, consolidating the company's regional diversification thesis in the face of a more pressured Chilean market.

**Coca-Cola Embonor (