The federal government managed to insert its strategy for value addition no mineral sector and greater protagonism in global production chains.
In the opinion of members of the mineral industry who follow negotiations with foreign governments, the mention of critical minerals in the agreement with South Korea also has a political and diplomatic character and serves to signal the Brazilian position to the great powers.
Brazil signed, this Monday (23), a broad cooperation agreement in trade and productive integration with South Korea, in which critical minerals were highlighted.
Although it is not a specific memorandum for the mineral sector, with India and, the agreement includes minerals in a context of value addition and integration of advanced technological production chains.
The document explicitly mentions critical minerals in different sections, focusing on industrial integration and no strengthening production chains.
In practice, this type of cooperation can range from joint mineral exploration and processing projects to chemical refining initiatives, technological development and supply of inputs for industrial sectors such as batteries, electronics and electric vehicles.
A South Korea is one of main industrial hubs in these areas and depends, much of it produced in China.
Internally, members of the government recognize that advancing to the more complex stages of the chain, such as the manufacture of permanent magnets, is still a distant objective. These phases require advanced technology, industrial scale and billion-dollar investments.
Still, there is room for the country to advance in intermediate stages, especially in chemical refining and the separation of individual rare earth elements, processes that transform the extracted ore into industrial products with greater added value.
Government strategy
The Brazilian government’s strategy has been to seek rapprochement with emerging countries that have advanced technology or relevant industrial capacity to signal to the great powers that the country intends to advance in more sophisticated stages of the production chain and reduce dependence on the export of raw materials.
In evaluating the productive sector, the federal government has used critical minerals as political instrument and diplomatic and leveraged agendas in Asia to .
The reading is that these initiatives function as indirect messages to the United States, Europe and China, indicating that Brazil intends to expand its role in the most profitable phases of the mineral industry.
This approach is also seen as a way of reinforce Brazilian negotiating power with large economies that concentrate technology and capital.
The government maintains conversations with these countries and has raised the level of demand in negotiations, focusing on technology transfer and installation of industrial stages in Brazil.
