Raw materials and trade protectionism in Chile

The aim of this bachelor’s thesis was to define what are the critical raw materials, to find out which ones are located in Chile, what is their importance for the local economy and whether Chile implements a protectionist trade policy when exporting and importing them, but also whether it applies barriers to the production of the critical raw materials themselves. This thesis used a comparison of officially published lists of critical raw materials to create a selection of five raw materials found on all the compared lists. These are cobalt, lithium, niobium, tantalum and vanadium. Out of these only cobalt, lithium and vanadium are found in Chile and only the first two are mined there. Based on the available data, this thesis presented the importance of cobalt and lithium for the Chilean economy, focusing on lithium because Chile is a significant world producer of this raw material. After identifying the main trade flows with critical raw materials, this thesis presented Chile as a country that supports a liberal foreign trade policy and stated that certain alternative forms of trade protectionism consist of barriers and restrictions connected with the production of critical raw materials. Chile is therefore protecting its significant mineral wealth, but using non-traditional trade barriers.