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Donald Trump Must Back Australia in the Fight for Strategic Metals
President-elect Donald Trump approaches his second term much differently than his first.No longer is his goal disruption, both the Republican party and the U.S. bureaucracy more broadly.
Whereas Trump achieved victories by getting NATO members to pony up their dues and achieving the Abraham Accords breakthrough, his greatest legacy might have been achieving bipartisan recognition that China was less a peer competitor whose cooperation might moderate and more a threat to the rules-based order.
Whereas the Supreme Court debates TikTok and China’s ambitions to conquer Taiwan if not other Pacific islands, strategic minerals fuels China’s drive.
Here, the Democratic Republic of Congo is ground zero.
If it were not for Congo’s endemic corruption, it could be the Qatar of Africa: Geologists and economists estimate that Congo’s mineral wealth could top $24 trillion.
The country is the world’s leading producer of cobalt, a metal necessary to produce the batteries upon which most 21st century electronic depend and is also one of the world’s leading producers of copper.
Add into the mix: uranium, gold, germanium, lithium, diamonds, nickel, tantalum, and tin, crude oil, and coffee.
While U.S. companies are late to the game in Congo and have missed opportunities through their own passivity to expand their presence in the market, companies from U.S. allies like Australia have been fighting for the 21st century on the frontlines in Africa.
The Australian mining sector is huge.
The skyscrapers of Perth shine with mining wealth, and the sector dominates West Australia’s economy and contributes to the country’s broader economy.
Because China was one of the Australian mining largest markets, Australian politicians like former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd long frustrated their American counterparts with their permissiveness toward China.
Canberra, like Washington, may have been slow to gauge Beijing’s threat correctly, but many Australians have now learned the lesson.
As China seeks to bribe and coerce Congo through illicit means to push Australian firms out of Congo’s mining sector, the Trump administration must defend Australia’s interests both diplomatically and with economic sanctions on Chinese firms.
The logic of the Lobito corridor is to direct African trade westward into the Atlantic basin in order to better orient African trade away from China.
China, however, is fighting dirty to hamper Australian mining in Africa.
Consider the case of AVZ Minerals, an Australian firm seeking to extract lithium and tin from Manono in southern Congo.
Exploratory digging shows the lithium deposits in the region are huge. Colloquially, AVZ hit the motherlode.
But Congolese corruption, abetted by the People’s Republic of China, seek to deny them their contractual right.
AVZ now has International Court of Arbitration cases pending before involving La Congolaise d’Exploitation Minière, Jin Cheng Mining Company, and Dathomir Mining Resources SARLU, and International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes against the Democratic Republic of Congo itself.
While AVZ does not seek to marginalize China entirely—economically it makes no sense for them to do so—they seek balance between East and West. China, however, rejects balance in favor of its own maximalist approach.
It has corrupted at least 13 Congolese media outlets.
Ten of millions of dollars held in escrow disappeared, a theft in which Chinese officials appear complicit.
The Congolese government proceeded to arrest journalists pursuing the story.
A March 2022 forensic investigation based on AVZ and Congolese documents showed hard evidence of Chinese bribery.
Chinese mining interests fund “non-governmental organizations” whose sole purpose appears to be to undermine Australia’s interest.
Congolese public companies also sold shares to Chinese firms at fire sale prices in contravention of the law in a scheme to quadruple personal profits for Congolese officials up to and including the prime minister.
Zijin and the Congolese government’s strategy appears to be economic attrition, to steal and filibuster until AVZ has no choice but to suspend operations and give up.
Zijin’s latest strategy appears to be to stop paying arbitration costs in the hope the court ceases its work.
AVZ is just one case among many that exposes how Chinese interests leverage Congo’s corruption to try to corner the market in strategic metals. The nature of the U.S. intelligence, national security, and diplomatic bureaucracy is compartmentalized.
Analysts spent their careers focused on the weeds, never getting to the trees let alone spotting the forest.
While the National Security Council is supposed to coordinate, it seldom effectively pieces together disparate problems, especially when they span bureaucracies let alone continents.
Rather than just chalk up AVZ’s difficulties extracting lithium and tin from Congo, it is important to understand how Beijing takes a “whole of government” approach to harass and cheat competitors, and the general shenanigans in which they engage.
Americans increasingly throw around the phrase “fake news” to discredit anything with which they disagree, the Congo dispute shows how China wholesale purchases and promotes fake stories in pursuit of its commercial monopolies and strategic interests.
If Trump seeks to counter China, it is essential he recognize the battle will not only be in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait, but also in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s forests and mines, international arbitration courts, and the boardrooms of Australia.
Incoming Secretary of State Marco Rubio should direct diplomats in Kinshasa to spend more time in southern Congo where the action is.
Rather than report on just another lunch with one cabinet minister or another, they should track their incomes and show up in various court proceedings to signal that Congo’s corruption will not proceed in the dark.
Australia might be on the frontline, but both the U.S. Departments of State and Commerce should signal that they see no even playing field; they will support allies and expect allied governments to support their own firms in the battle against Beijing’s interests.
If Beijing operates with such granularity, Trump, Rubio, and every other principal in the incoming U.S. administration must ask why the United States should not do so as well.
By Michael Rubin
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