The United States on Tuesday warned of the dangers of Chinese influence on lithium and other critical minerals in Latin America and noted: “There is always a political cost when you talk about China.”

The scope of the discussion was the 8th Hemispheric Security Conference organized by Florida International University, which was attended by several US administration officials and military and regional security experts.

Everyone, in some way, has shown concern about China’s advance in the region, especially for strategic minerals such as lithium – Argentina is one of the main producers in the world – and also energy.

One of them was Juan González, President Joe Biden’s special adviser for Latin America, who stressed that “China has been very competitive, not only in acquiring lithium reserves around the world and they are doing so even if the reserves are profitable or not.And he added that “the United States must create the tools for the private sector to compete in that way even if it is not profitable”.

González warned: “Although it is a strong word, I think what China is doing is picking up in Caribbean and Latin American countries. Not only by extracting resources, but also by collaborating with Chile, Argentina and Bolivia.”

The official said that “when it comes to competition in critical minerals, it is difficult to compete with a Chinese sovereign wealth fund that is generally used for political reasons. The United States is capitalist, it has a capitalist system and will not develop a fund as such.”

“The Chinese give or sell politically. There is always a political cost when it comes to China,” he said. The challenge for the United States, according to González, is to come up with a proposal to work with allied countries to be able to bring the capital and have competition.

“China is also investing in the electricity grid in Latin America and many projects are financed by them,” he said. “We want to mobilize for the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean to maintain their independence and I believe there is much more to be done in this space.”

The conference was also attended by Laura Richardson, head of US Southern Command. She pointed out that “many countries seek stability for their people and China sometimes claims to contribute to these countries, but in reality it is exploiting their resources. Let us remember what the Communist Party of China is doing, how it is preparing its platform, its future, with infrastructure across the region. The same goes for strategic resources and minerals”.

“I encourage you to spread this call to action. We don’t want to see more extraction, my militarization by China. We need our allies to support us in this,” Richardson asked. “We must seek a viable alternative to the Communist Party of China’s infrastructure projects and find innovative solutions to our challenges.”