Nominal GDP 344.4B PercapitaGDP $17,254 Average Wage $7,308/yr, Population 19,458,310, Debt to GDP 39.41%, Inflation 26.83%, Unemployment 9.7%, 2022 Exports $28.9B, Imports $19.7B, Trade Surplus $9.2B, Land area 291,932 sq miles, Arable land 14.25%, Urban 87%, Rural 23%.
Export goods include mining minerals, copper, agriculture, fishing, forestry and processed foods
Import goods include raw food, Refined Petroleum ($11.5B), Cars ($4.82B), Crude Petroleum ($4.64B), Delivery Trucks ($3.39B), and Petroleum Gas ($2.72B), importing mostly from China ($24.9B), United States ($21.6B), Brazil ($9.17B), Argentina ($5.11B), and Germany ($2.98B).
Chile faces two big challenges in the coming years, one economic and one political. The big economic challenge is to restore growth, which has slowed substantially in the last decade. Productivity growth, which was very fast late in the twentieth century and in the beginning of this century, has also petered out.
In Chile, the majority of mineral mines are in conflict, with indigenous peoples in many cases, who are left to risk their wellbeing to protest against the lithium and copper mining in order to protect their lands and the environment.
Land ownership by
indigenous people is common in South America.
A total of 2,185,792 people self-identify as Indigenous, equivalent to 12.8% of the country's total population (17,076,076). The Mapuche are the most numerous (almost 1,800,000 people).
The environmental fallout from lithium mining is clear and far-reaching. Massive quantities of fresh water, classified as a precious resource in these arid regions, are diverted for lithium mining operations, fueling the salt flats brine. This leaves local communities and wildlife parched.
If properly evaluated, mining waste can be reused to reextract minerals, provide additional fuel for power plants, supply construction materials, and repair surface and subsurface land structures altered by mining activities themselves.
Rare-earth elements (REEs) are a group of 17 chemical elements considered critical for digitalization and for the energy transition. While called “rare”, they are not in fact rare in the Earth’s crust and can be found in many places. REEs have unique magnetic, optical and electronic properties that make them crucial (and difficult to substitute) for many uses such as wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles, LED and LCD screens, hard drives, fiber optic cables, catalysts, steel alloys, hydrogen technologies and all kinds of electric motors for cars, toys or drones. Nevertheless, REEs are not only strategic for wind, solar or electric batteries, but also for defense and aerospace engineering: to produce aircraft, missiles, satellites and communications systems. Indeed, the European Commission’s proposal for the EU Critical Raw Materials Act, published in the spring of 2023, mentions the strategic need for these materials for the green and digital transition as well as for defense and the aerospace industry.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea
Party Leader
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