Chile's lithium gamble: modest steps amid trillion-dollar mineral race.

Today's session was marked by an accumulation of signals that, taken together, reveal a structural tension at the heart of Chile's economic strategy: the country is advancing simultaneously on multiple fronts —trade, mining, regulatory, and fiscal policy— but with none of those fronts yet closed, and with the market punishing precisely that accumulated uncertainty.

The IPSA closed down 0.8%, losing the 11,500-point mark after approaching all-time highs at the start of the week. The immediate driver was a sharp drop in SQM, the lithium producer whose shares also trade on the New York Stock Exchange, on a day when copper touched $6.50 per pound and Brent crude ceded the $90 threshold. The dollar, for its part, reversed an initial decline to close slightly higher, decoupling from the broader trend in sovereign yields and pricing in the US inflation data that Wall Street is awaiting closely —the Nasdaq rose 0.7% and the S&P 500 gained 0.3%, in a session dominated by anticipation of Nvidia's results.

The pressure on SQM is no accident. Citi published an analysis today quantifying at $1.65 trillion the capex required in critical minerals to meet global demand through 2035, of which $780 billion corresponds to copper and $340 billion to lithium. The figure is so staggering that it inevitably raises questions about how much of it Chile will capture, and on what terms. Precisely in that context, the government today signed the first Special Lithium Operation Contract with a private party in Arica: Quiborax will receive authorization to recover lithium from the historical tailings of its El Águila plant, with projected investment of $70 million and capacity to process nearly twenty thousand tons of lithium carbonate equivalent through 2046. It is a step, but a modest one relative to the scale of demand Citi describes.

More substantial, in terms of both scale and political symbolism, was the formalization of Minera Puntilla, the joint venture between Codelco and Pucobre to develop the Tovaku copper project in Antofagasta. The agreed structure —60% for private Pucobre, controlled by the Hurtado Vicuña and Fernández León families, and 40% for the state company— with investment of close to $870 million and a production target for 2030, marks the first public-private partnership of the Fontaine era at the helm of Codelco's board. The signal is deliberate: the state producer, which has accumulated debt and lagging projects for years, is betting that private capital can accelerate development phases it could not finance alone at the same pace. If the formula works, it could be replicated.

On the trade front, the session confirmed that Chile is playing on several boards at once, with uncertain outcomes on all of them. Talks with US negotiator Jeffrey Goettman concluded without a concrete deal: the USTR representative heard the Chilean arguments product by product —salmon, wine, grapes, blueberries, fishmeal, all levied at the 12.5% rate Washington imposed under a forced labor rationale— and returned home tasked with assessing whether the fundamentals are sufficient. Chile is left waiting, in an uncomfortable position that export associations described as unsatisfactory. Simultaneously, India's Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal arrives in Santiago this Wednesday to continue talks toward a potential bilateral agreement. The diversification of trade partners that for years was a slogan has, under Trump's tariff pressure, become an operational urgency.

On the domestic front, the mega tax reform continues to reverberate. The Constitutional Tribunal rejected the government's challenge to the article requiring utility companies to reconnect users free of charge in disaster zones, within 24 and 48 hours depending on the service. The Confederación de la Producción y el Comercio and sector associations —electricity, gas, water— maintain their substantive criticism: the rule shifts the cost of a public policy onto companies operating under regulated tariffs, and in practice, they argue, is impossible to comply with. Claudia Torres, general manager of Bci Asset Management, anticipated that passage of the reform will generate a meaningful flow of affluent clients into vehicles with capital gains exemptions, though she warned that many investments remain on hold pending the Reconstruction Law.

Regulatory uncertainty also has a pension dimension that took on relevance today. Clapes UC warned that the risk of the pension system's Fund E has nearly tripled between 2010 and 2025, the result of regulations that allowed increased exposure to long-duration bonds, instruments especially sensitive to interest rate hikes. The warning arrives just as generational funds —the centerpiece of the pension reform— are about to be implemented, and raises an uncomfortable question about whether the regulatory design is building systemic risk in the system that most affects the least sophisticated savers.

In parallel, SOFOFA presented a study quantifying at least 80,800 direct jobs as the impact of cutting four percentage points from the corporate tax rate —from 27% to 23%—, with projections that under the government's growth scenario could exceed 330,000 positions between 2026 and 2030. The figure is politically potent, but the Kast administration faces the difficult task of persuading a fragmented Congress while simultaneously managing the mega reform, the restructuring of the state —today it presented the commission on new ministerial architecture, with 120 days to deliver proposals— and external trade negotiations.

What to watch in the coming days is multiple but convergent: Washington's response to Chile's tariff arguments will set the tone of the bilateral relationship for months; Nvidia's results tonight in the United States will move global markets and with them risk appetite for emerging markets; progress in the lithium regulatory concession process —with Quiborax as the first case— will define whether the model can scale; and publication of the reasoning behind the Constitutional Tribunal's ruling on utilities will clarify whether the mega reform's provisions have any room for adjustment. Chile has rarely had so many critical variables open at the same time.

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**Camanchaca (BCS: CAMANCHACA)** — The fishing company reported first-half earnings of US$40 million, up 31% year-on-year, with revenue of US$467 million and EBITDA of US$95 million; the fishing segment offset price pressure and SRS outbreaks in salmon. The company, exposed to Asian and North American markets, highlighted improved prices for fishing products as the main earnings driver.

**Chattigo (unlisted)** — The Chilean omnichannel platform startup was acquired by Capacity, a US artificial intelligence company whose clients include Disney and Apple, in a transaction worth approximately US$60 million. The deal marks one of the largest exits for a Chilean tech startup in the conversational AI segment and consolidates Capacity's presence in Latin America.

**CMPC (BCS: CMPC)** — The Matte group's forestry arm hosted Georgia Governor Brian Kemp in Santiago to explore new investments in that state, which accounts for 25% of its US sales; CMPC's clients in Georgia include Georgia-Pacific, Home Depot and First Quality. The company is evaluating opportunities in wood products, leveraging port infrastructure and the forestry base of the southeastern United States.