While US President Donald Trump has ripped up much of his predecessor’s climate and foreign policy, he has pushed forward with Joe Biden’s pursuit of metals and minerals abroad while shifting the strategic focus from clean energy to military use, analysts say.

Biden spent some of his final days as US leader in Angola, talking up a railway that will bring copper and cobalt from Central Africa to the continent’s west coast where the materials can be shipped to the US.

Since coming to power in January, Trump has discussed deals to provide military assistance to the war-torn nations of Ukraine and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in return for minerals, threatened to take over mineral-rich Greenland, and is reportedly considering a new law that would bypass UN discussions so as to allow mining of the deep seabed in international waters.

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This week, Massad Boulos, Trump’s senior advisor on Africa, travelled to DRC as his first port of call shortly after being appointed. In a meeting with DRC President Felix Tshisekedi, Boulos – father-in-law to Trump’s daughter – said the US had reviewed the DRC’s minerals proposal. He said he was “pleased to announce that the President and I have agreed on a path forward for its development,” according to a statement from the DRC government.

While the details of the mooted deal are not yet public, Boulos said he would work with Tshisekedi to build a deeper relationship that benefits both the Congolese and American people and “to stimulate American private sector investment in the DRC, particularly in the mining sector”.

A day earlier, Trump exempted key minerals like copper and cobalt from the new trade tariffs he slapped on nations around the world.

The big unanswered question is why his administration is so keen to secure supplies of these resources, which are increasingly sought after because they are key to advancing the clean energy transition.

Fadhel Kaboub, associate professor of economics at Denison University in Ohio, said Trump’s interest is likely driven primarily by the importance of critical minerals for military and high-tech purposes. “The Trump administration is known for its anti-climate action rhetoric,” he said, adding that its priority is definitely not the energy transition, but other competitive sectors such as defence.

Once extracted and processed, minerals like copper and cobalt – which the DRC has in abundance – can be used in clean technology or for military equipment, among other things. Copper can be used to channel green electricity or as a liner for anti-tank missiles. Cobalt can be used for electric vehicle batteries or alloys for fighter jets.

Stockpiling critical minerals

The Trump administration – which heavily favours fossil fuel extraction over clean energy expansion – has publicly emphasised the military uses of minerals. Adam Burstein, the Department of Defense’s technical director for strategic and critical materials, said in January that the US is committed to “stockpiling critical minerals” to reduce the risk of supply chain disruptions from China, which dominates the sector.

In February, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked about the Dominican Republic’s minerals. He said the world needs these for “technologies that are used for defence” and other advanced technologies, adding that “we want to help develop this wealth”.

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When asked if the US government’s rhetoric on sourcing minerals for defence could shift these materials away from clean technologies, Ellie Saklatvala, head of nonferrous metal pricing at Argus Media, said there may be times when “demand for metals for defence applications competes directly with demand for clean energy applications”.

When it comes to raw materials, Saklatvala added, the defence sector can usually pay more for supplies, and this can have a significant impact on overall price levels if large volumes are acquired quickly.

Thomas Kavanagh, editor for battery materials at Argus Media, said there is potential for competition between these two sectors to grow “especially as cobalt going into the US defence industry is quite limited to a small number of suppliers, mainly outside of the DRC”.

DRC lobbying campaign

While Ukraine is still working on a diplomatically tricky deal with Washington for access to its minerals and Greenland has so far resisted overtures and even threats from the US to annex it from Denmark, the DRC under Tshisekedi has actively lobbied for a deal with the Trump administration in exchange for protection from the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels which have grabbed swathes of the DRC’s east.

Shortly after Trump’s election, documents submitted to the US government under the Foreign Agents Registration Act show that the DRC began employing a Republican lobbyist called Karl Von Batten to lobby in Washington on its behalf.

By calling and emailing contacts at the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee, Von Batten managed to set up a Zoom call between its chair, Brian Mast, and Tshisekedi on February 11, according to a document published online by the US Department of Justice.

Von Batten then organised a five-day visit by a delegation from the DRC government to Washington in late February, at a cost of $350,000, where they met with US defence, state department and trade officials.

According to the official document signed by Von Batten, strengthening “military and investment ties” was on the agenda, as were “preliminary discussions about a potential meeting” between Tshisekedi and Trump and planning a media strategy on “public narratives surrounding DRC initiatives”.

Since that visit, Republican Congressman Ronny Jackson travelled to the DRC in March to meet with Tshisekedi. According to the DRC government, Jackson was acting as an envoy for Trump and said in the meeting: “We want to work so that American companies can come and invest and work in the DRC. And for that to happen, we must ensure that there is an environment of peace”.

Tshisekedi also went on Trump’s favourite TV channel – Fox News – to talk about the proposed deal. “We are very happy to say that with the Trump administration, things are moving a lot faster on both sides,” he said in French, adding, “