Critical minerals and a window of opportunity for Argentina and the US

Argentina and the United States have a rare opportunity to build something more durable than a short-term political alliance or a narrow trade relationship. Together, they can forge a strategic partnership around critical minerals that helps Argentina move up the value chain, strengthens US supply security and reduces the concentration risks that now define global markets.

That opportunity is no longer theoretical. Argentina has emerged as one of the world’s most promising mining jurisdictions, with major lithium reserves, a growing project pipeline, and renewed momentum in copper. At the same time, the bilateral relationship is gaining greater economic substance. Recent agreements on critical minerals, trade, and investment suggest that these resources are no longer peripheral to US-Argentina ties – they are becoming one of their defining pillars.

Argentina’s new investment framework also changes the conversation. The RIGI major investment incentive scheme offers greater stability and seeks to make sectors such as mining, energy and infrastructure more attractive for long-term investment. For Argentina this creates a more credible platform for long-term investment. For Washington, it creates a more serious basis for cooperation. 

But that partnership will fall short if it is built on extraction alone.

For too long, countries like Argentina have been treated as little more than raw-material suppliers. That model generates exports, but it leaves the highest-value stages of the chain elsewhere – especially in processing, refining, advanced materials, and manufacturing. This is precisely the bottleneck that has allowed China to consolidate such a powerful position in critical mineral supply chains despite the largest lithium reserves residing closer to home.

A smarter US-Argentina agenda must begin there. The goal should not simply be to source more minerals from Argentina, but to help finance and de-risk the next stages of production inside the country itself. That means combining Argentine incentives, such as RIGI, with US development finance, infrastructure support, offtake coordination and investment-risk mitigation. Done well, this would ensure Argentina captures more value than traditional extractive models have allowed.

Yet geopolitics and supply-chain resilience are only half the story. The real opportunity for Argentina is domestic and developmental. The country’s critical-minerals endowment should also be understood as a platform for meeting its 2030 industrial and energy-transition goals through greater value addition and battery-chain development. 

Argentina does not need to replicate the entire battery value chain overnight, nor should it pursue unrealistic industrial ambitions. But it does mean that the country should approach lithium as a foundation for capability-building. The central question is not only how much lithium Argentina can export, but how much value it can retain, what technologies it can develop and how mineral wealth can be linked to industrial policy, innovation, and long-term competitiveness. 

That distinction matters. If Argentina remains only an upstream supplier, it may benefit from global demand, but it will still capture only a fraction of the economic and strategic value created by the energy transition. If it can move selectively into higher-value stages, the benefits could extend well beyond mining exports to infrastructure, technical capacity and the foundations of a more diversified industrial economy.

A stronger critical-minerals partnership would reinforce broader US-Argentina cooperation and Argentina’s domestic development strategy. For the United States, supporting Argentina’s move into higher value-added stages would strengthen critical mineral security, create alternatives to concentrated processing hubs, and anchor a trusted partner within its hemispheric network. For Argentina, such cooperation would be more meaningful than a simple buyer-seller relationship. It would support a national strategy centred on industrial upgrading, not just resource extraction.

This broader argument is one of the central conclusions of ‘Critical Minerals: The Western Hemisphere’s Opportunity,’ a recent report by the Institute of the Americas think tank. The report argues that the Americas should not think about critical minerals simply as a question of extraction, but as part of a larger strategy of regional cooperation, investment, processing, and industrial upgrading. In Argentina, that conversation is especially timely because the country now has an opportunity to connect its mineral wealth to a more ambitious development strategy.

That is also why these issues deserve more public discussion. On April 10, the University of Buenos Aires’ CEARE, the Argentine Center of Engineers (CAI) and the Institute of the Americas (IOA) will convene a high-level panel discussion on Argentina’s role in critical minerals, US-Argentina cooperation, and the future of value-added development in the hemisphere. The point is to advance a serious debate about how resource wealth can be translated into long-term strategic and industrial gains.

Argentina has the resources. The United States has capital, technology, and strategic need. The window is open.

Come join us at the event by registering here.

* Mateo Micucci, Researcher/Consultant, Critical Minerals, Institute of the Americas; ** Raúl Bertero, Vice-Dean, School of Engineering, University of Buenos Aires and President of Centro de Estudios de la Actividad Regulatoria Energética (CEARE)