Javier Milei has started his libertarian economic experiment to transform Argentina. In a series of dispatches, The Telegraph’s World Economy Editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard travels through what used to be one of the world’s richest nations to examine whether “shock therapy” can work. The geopolitical struggle for clean-tech supremacy is being fought at 13,700 feet on the salt lakes of the Argentine Cordillera. It is here, in the border regions that make up the Lithium Triangle of the high Andes, where China and the West are battling for control over 60pc of the world’s lithium reserves, the critical mineral for electric vehicles and the post-carbon economy. The two sides are engaged in a strange mix of fierce competition and joint ventures, sharing much in character with the contradictions of the commercial Cold War. The Salar del Hombre Muerto (dead man) has an austere spiritual beauty, but it is a hard place to earn a living. The crews do turns of 14 days on, and 14 days off, enduring the seven-hour journey in a convoy of buses along a dirt road, via a pass near 15,000 feet up, before plunging down into the sub-tropical 16th century oasis of Salta where the wine...