That’s the problem. The government will (theoretically) demand a fair price. But private companies will cut so many corners or obtain the products illegally to undercut each other. It probably costs less to spend 6 months finding a shady company who will offer a 5% discount vs a standard government paperwork

Cheap labor is the cornerstone of imperialist extractive industry. If the local labor cannot be oppressed from shady deals with private “consultants” the whole price of doing business becomes less appealing. It’s hard to maximize profits and build an industry on resources when there is a reasonable chance the miners might get payed enough to live a decent life. It’s a tale as old as time, from the days of the British Empire to Blackrock and Vanguard.

This will increase the price of Lithium to those buyers.

Longer-term, the natural next step for Chilé after this would be to focus on building domestic industry to create batteries and sell those, just how several other countries are pivoting. Combined with the US’ increasingly protectionist policies around cars, tech, and batteries, this will actuslly divert supply to other markets, decreasing their relative competitiveness, and therefore sales and profits. Basically, their imported lithium will become harder to come by and more expensive while their competitors’ cars get more supply and (comparatively) cheaper batteries.

This is why those protectionist policies are actually going into place, btw. The entire US auto industry was going to get crushed by this tendency so long as EVs are ascendant, and the only version of addressing climate change that is currently workable in the US is about propping up EVs in a way that tries to keep it on the tippy top of its flagging hegemon.