More disturbing to neoliberals was the government’s move to nationalise Chile’s largest US-owned copper mines. US law required ‘adequate, prompt and effective compensation’ for expropriated US companies. As the campaign for Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources discussed in Chapter 3 intensified, Allende received a standing ovation in the United Nations General Assembly when he explained that his government would deduct ‘excess profits’ amounting to US$774 million from the compensation it paid the two biggest US mining companies, leaving them with a debt to the Chilean government. What Allende termed Chile’s ‘reasoned rebellion’ challenged the inequalities of the global economy, giving substance to the demand for economic self-determination.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 318