Trump aides urged sale of Congo lithium claim to Bay Area company

By Joe Deaux, Sheridan Prasso, William Clowes and Michael J Kavanagh, Bloomberg

During a meeting at the White House last month, Trump administration officials urged an Australian mining executive to sell his firm’s interest in a major African lithium project to a US company — an unusual session that offers a rare, behind-the-scenes glimpse into the administration’s deal-brokering as it pursues an ambitious and controversial policy on critical minerals.

People familiar with the Jan. 21 meeting described it as an effort by the White House and US State Department to persuade Perth-based AVZ Minerals Ltd. to sell its claim to the Manono lithium deposit in the Democratic Republic of Congo to a US firm. The people asked not to be named to discuss sensitive matters.

“The White House encouraged AVZ to do a commercially responsible deal with an American company — but did not nominate a specific company,” Nigel Ferguson, AVZ’s managing director, said in a statement responding to questions from Bloomberg News. “They are not putting pressure on AVZ to do a deal with a specific company, but with any vetted, genuinely American company.”

The only US firm that’s known to have an interest in taking over AVZ’s claim to the Manono lithium project is KoBold Metals, a Berkeley, California-based, AI-driven exploration startup whose backers include billionaires Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Marc Andreessen. KoBold, which has the support of the Congolese government, has offered to acquire AVZ’s interest at a price that AVZ executives consider far less than reasonable, according to people familiar with the offer. KoBold declined to comment. The firm’s interest in Manono was first reported by Bloomberg last March.

The US State Department also declined to comment. In response to questions about the Jan. 21 meeting, a US official said the administration is working in collaboration with Congolese officials “to identify opportunities for US investment throughout the DRC including the critical minerals sector.”

Descriptions of the White House meeting provided to Bloomberg News reflect the Trump administration’s new approach to boosting projects and companies it deems critical to US national security. Lithium is key for making rechargeable batteries, mainly used in electric vehicles but also in military communications equipment, drones and weapons systems.

During the session, US officials including special adviser to the president David Copley and State Department adviser Chris Kulukundis made clear that getting access to Manono — one of the largest hard-rock lithium deposits in the world – is a top priority for American officials, including President Donald Trump, who are  working to reduce China’s commanding lead in securing supplies of critical minerals.

“Because of how distorted supply chains have become due to China’s dominance, we can’t go into this competition for access by playing by Marquess of Queensberry rules,” said J. Peter Pham, a former US special envoy to Congo and its surrounding region during Trump’s first term. He’s currently a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center in Washington and executive chairman of a firm developing an iron-ore mine in the West African nation of Guinea. The Queensberry rules, established in 1867, created modern boxing in part by replacing bare-knuckled fighting with mandatory gloves.

With respect to Manono, the Trump administration has some potential leverage: An economic partnership agreement with Congo that’s designed to give American investors preferential access to some of Congo’s abundant mineral reserves also calls for strengthening the two nations’ “cooperation in security, defense and protection of critical infrastructure.” That pact, which was announced in December, could serve as a framework for providing enhanced security for a mine and related facilities — no small consideration in Congo, where thousands of people were killed last year alone in fighting between rebels backed by neighboring Rwanda and Congolese forces.

The rebels, known as M23, currently occupy a vast area in Congo’s eastern provinces a few hundred miles from Manono, but they have at times threatened to move south toward Tanganyika province in southeastern Congo where the mining project is located. Over much of last year, Trump and his administration sought to quell the violence and enhance US influence over Congolese affairs by brokering a peace agreement known as the Washington Accords. Trump, accompanied by leaders from Congo and Rwanda, signed the accords in December. The shakiness of the pact was highlighted just days later when the M23 captured a third major Congolese city before withdrawing a few days later.

It’s unclear what form any enhanced security might take, but foreign policy experts in Washington said the Manono discussions fit into a broader pattern of the US seeking “minerals-for-security” deals around the world.

“There’s something that the US gets as well,” said Heidi Crebo-Rediker, a senior fellow on the Council on Foreign Relations and the co-author of a report published this month on how the US can leapfrog China to dominate critical-mineral supply chains. “It’s a much more forceful approach than we’ve seen in the past. We’ve moved from carrots to sticks.”

Pham agreed. “If you want to benefit from America’s diplomatic and security cover, the US is going to want American companies to have privileged access to economic opportunities in line with Washington’s strategic investment in partnership,” he said.

It sounds to me like a material shift in tone to say, ‘sell it to the Americans’

Pressing for a sale to a US firm would represent a new edge in US policy, said Peter Harrell, a former Biden administration economic adviser who’s now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“It isn’t uncommon for US government officials to meet with a foreign company that has a strategic asset it might be selling and saying: ‘We’d like for that to not end up in Chinese hands,’” said Harrell, who previously worked at the State Department and the White House and said he’d been involved in such conversations. “It sounds to me like a material shift in tone to say, ‘sell it to the Americans.’”

AVZ’s rights to the Manono project have a convoluted history. Congo revoked the mining permit in 2023, after the Australian company had found Manono to contain one of the largest hard-rock lithium deposits in the world. The authorities then awarded the northern half of the concession to China’s Zijin Mining Group Co., which is set to start producing the mineral in mid-2026. AVZ has initiated international arbitration cases to recover the entire exploration license.

KoBold, the US firm, wrote to the office of Congo’s president in January 2025 to say that in order to advance its plans for mining the southern part of Manono, AVZ would need to receive “appropriate compensation” and agree to transfer all its interests in Congo to KoBold.

State-owned Cominiere SA now owns the license covering the southern portion of Manono, according to Congo’s register of mining rights. “It’s ill-advised for AVZ to engage in negotiations about a permit which doesn’t belong to it,” said Managing Director Celestin Kibeya.

Complicating matters further is that a Chinese joint venture involving Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., or CATL, the world’s largest battery manufacturer, is AVZ’s biggest shareholder and has an agreement with the Australian company to purchase Manono’s lithium production. That investor is also funding AVZ’s arbitration campaign.

During last month’s White House meeting, officials expressed urgency to secure a deal. Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio played host to a major ministerial meeting of global government officials involved in critical minerals. As part of the ministerial-level event, the US and its allies pitched price floors as a way to shield Western critical minerals companies from China’s dominance of the global market.

Manono is just one of several mining projects Congolese and US officials have identified as key to the Washington Accords. Another part of the negotiations entailed finding a US buyer for Chemaf SA, which received financial backing from Trafigura Group and is building one of the world’s largest cobalt mines.

Chemaf put itself up for sale more than two years ago after a slump in cobalt prices stalled expansion works. The heavily indebted company scrapped a deal with a Chinese firm 10 months ago because Congo withheld the necessary approvals. US officials in the Biden administration also urged the central African country to prevent the transaction, Bloomberg has previously reported.

A firm headed by veterans of the US military and intelligence services agreed to buy Chemaf, Bloomberg reported last week. The company, Virtus Minerals Inc., will pay an undisclosed sum for Chemaf and assume the firm’s liabilities, including debt owed to Trafigura, Managing Director Phil Braun said.

In an email at the end of January, Virtus told Chemaf that Virtus had received the support of the US State Department. The email, which was reviewed by Bloomberg News, was carbon copied to Kulukundis, the State department adviser.

A third Congolese mining project singled out for US investment is the tantalum deposits at Rubaya in eastern Congo, but any progress would be impossible until the M23 withdraw from that area.

Congolese officials believe US political pressure in the region has been crucial for halting further advancement of the M23. China’s Zijin is planning an export route for the Manono lithium via Kalemie port on Lake Tanganyika, 450 kilometers (280 miles) away, and it’s currently building a road to the port.

Manono’s lithium would be boarded onto ships bound for Tanzania on the other side of the lake, and ultimately to China and global markets.

“The fact is, markets have failed. It’s ended up in a near-monopoly situation of China controlling 80% of processing for critical minerals,” Pham said. “The solutions of the past aren’t sufficient.”

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.