President Joe Biden in sub-Saharan Africa this week unveiled an additional $600 million to build a cross-continental rail project with the hopes of ramping up competition around mineral trade with China.
Unlike other policies on the chopping block, experts and senior Biden officials say the massive project, known as the Lobito Corridor, has a good chance of surviving under incoming President-elect Donald Trump and among China hawks on the Hill.
“This is the way in which the U.S. is going to push back against China, which is going to be a priority for Trump,” said Witney Schneidman, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs.
Biden early in his administration laid out a strategy of supporting multifaceted infrastructure, energy and agricultural projects in Africa, a mineral-rich region of the world where China has invested for years. The effort has been in direct competition with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which has built out infrastructure in developing regions.
