Oil sales helped to nearly double Angola’s GDP between 2002 and 2008.
Many finance ministers in the poor world fondly recall the last commodity “supercycle”, when rising China’s insatiable demand pushed up the price of metals and fossil fuels. FOR BETTER or worse, many poor countries’ fortunes hinge on their natural resources. Since their industries are less sophisticated and their service sectors smaller than in rich places, an underground bounty can make a big difference to their economic prospects. Rising global demand for oil or ores can spur growth, attract investment and fill fiscal holes.
On October 16th the World Bank said it would quintuple, to $20bn, a fund to help countries capture some of the surging demand. In May 2025 Mr Trump was forced to rein in tariffs he had imposed on Chinese goods, after China retaliated by restricting exports of seven rare-earth minerals used to make semiconductors and weapons.
One Texan investor says administration officials approached him on eight separate occasions. Yet in order to succeed, their governments cannot rely only on their subterranean resources or their cosiness with America and China. They must also show ability to supply stuff at speed. The urgency is palpable. America wants to break China’s chokehold. It has stockpiled minerals, offered producers guaranteed prices and poured billions into mining projects, while chivvying private investors to do the same.
In 2025 the American government and American firms spent $15.4bn on foreign mines, up from nearly nothing in 2024, and more is expected this year, according to officials. At least a tenth of that came from EXIM, a government-owned bank, and the Development Finance Corporation, a bank that once doled out loans to clinics and climate activists but has been repurposed by Mr Trump and given $205bn to play with. In response, Chinese state-owned mining giants splurged well over $30bn abroad, far more than in 2024 (see chart 1). A government-financed fund is in talks to buy 40% of one of the last remaining Western-owned operating mines, a copper concern run by Glencore, a Swiss-based company. The firm has already spent $2.8bn acquiring the mine. A further package pulled together by the Department of War and a loan from the DFC will push American investment to nearly $5bn. In November 2025 Kaz Resources, a firm backed by the administration and by investors including Eric Trump and Donald Trump junior, two of the president’s sons, is stumping up $1bn to develop deposits at Kairakty, first explored in 1958, and Northern Katpar. A further $1.6bn could come via the DFC and EXIM. Last year just five countries—the DRC, Brazil and Kazakhstan, plus Zambia and Canada—accounted for nearly 80% of the two superpowers’ combined mining investments abroad.
The Kazakh government managed to extract a bigger stake in the Kairakty joint venture than America first offered, according to the two American officials. The wheedling has worked. The superpowers’ combined investments have not been this high since the last supercycle started to unwind a decade ago. Now America is back, too. Private firms have followed. KoBold Metals, a Californian startup, is probing lithium deposits in the DRC’s Manono region. Virtus, an unlikely coalition of ex-spooks and soldiers, has bought a cobalt and copper venture with headquarters in Dubai. America’s approach has been the more focused. In Brazil it has set about building a rare-earth empire. In September USA Rare Earth, a listed company in which the government has a stake, took over Serra Verde, the only producer of four of the scarcest such minerals outside Asia. In Kazakhstan America is eyeing tungsten, which is vital to high-tech arms-manufacturing. The deal is equivalent to nearly a twentieth of Kazakhstan’s annual FDI inflow. With the exception of Canada, for which Mr Trump seems to feel special contempt, Sino-American rivalry is paying off for these fortunate few. On a visit to Beijing in March, DRC officials obtained commitments from China to share more data and invest more in local processing. China has also agreed to share the ownership of its Congolese copper project with the local state-owned diamond miner.
