OBELA Analysis

global currency, and much of the dominance in the microprocessor industry, through Intel, AMD and Qualcomm. China, on the other hand, has significant strategic advantages in telecommunications with the 5G network and the Huawei company.

The global semiconductor industry is concentrated in a few firms and a few countries. Although the manufacturing link in the semiconductor chain is in Asia, the licensing, intellectual property and production segments of the semiconductor value chain do not pass through China.

The Asian country has begun work towards chip manufacturing autonomy, which can be consolidated using reverse engineering. It is inevitable that the Asian country will develop an autonomous and competitive semiconductor industry and thus reduce its backwardness vis-à-vis the United States.

The change in the world energy matrix plays an important role in the trade war and the dispute for hegemony. While the US wants to conserve oil as an energy source, China is pushing the switch to clean energy at lower prices on the world market.

In this context, lithium plays an important role, as the main input for batteries, including those for electric cars.

South America is a disputed territory now fostered by lithium as a strategic resource, as was the saltpeter that led to a war in the nineteenth century.

Throughout the world, the effects of neoliberal policies have exhausted society. Except in Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia, since the late 1980s, economic policy in Latin America has been based on the free market.

The economic balances are ambiguous, with successive financial crises, high income concentration and social exclusion along with declining primary export growth, decade by decade since 1990.

Social balances are even worse in terms of privatization of public goods such as education, health, and the deterioration of salaries, quality of employment and pensions. The October protests in Ecuador, Chile, Haiti and Argentina express a general feeling of fed up with the economic policy model.