President Donald Trump’s threat to halt aid to South Africa is clashing with one of his top energy objectives: securing supplies of critical minerals.
South African officials rebuked Trump and his top adviser, tech billionaire Elon Musk, at a major African mining conference Monday, urging countries throughout the mineral-rich continent to cut off exports to the U.S. of cobalt, nickel and rare earth elements if the Trump administration follows through on his vow to cut off aid to South Africa.
“Let’s withhold minerals to the U.S.,” Gwede Mantashe, South Africa’s minister of mineral and petroleum resources, said at Mining Indaba in Cape Town.
“If they don’t give us money, let’s not give them minerals,” Mantashe said. “We are not just beggars, but we must just use that endowment for our benefit, as a continent we are [paralyzed] with fear, we are going to collapse, but with minerals at our doorstep.”