United States

Once again, Africa finds itself trapped in the geopolitical tussle between China and the United States. This time, it is the struggle over Africa’s critical minerals. Beginning in August 2022, President Joe Biden of the United States signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law with the promotion of American investments in clean energy and climate-driven technologies as a primary goal of this law. The IRA’s corollary objective was the promotion of environmental justice in the United States. Therefore, for both energy capitalists and transition economy enthusiasts, this was supposed to be a win-win situation. However, more was unsaid. The IRA’s passage was not only about building American industries and homegrown green technologies. One of its goals was to significantly reduce America’s reliance on China for the supply of critical minerals. Despite the significant steps taken under the IRA to reduce American dependence on China for critical minerals, it is evident that the United States feels the need to do more. Recently, the United States Senate passed the Intergovernmental Critical Minerals Task Force Act (ICMTFA). The expectation is that the ICMTFA would ramp up American efforts to reduce its demand on China and other states the United States labels as adversarial states. Together, a combined reading of the IRA and ICMTFA represents a new frontier of American national security interests styled as clean energy laws and transition policies. These developments take place against a backdrop of a significant demand in critical minerals that will outpace supply in less than two decades from now. These maneuvers also speak to the lesser-explored American experience with China nearly a decade ago in a dispute involving China’s restrictions on the export of rare earth minerals. The United States, together with other states, challenged China’s export quotas at the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The DSB ruled that China’s restrictions violated WTO law.

The US Government announced on October 30th that the Central African Republic (CAR), Gabon, Niger, and Uganda will be removed from the list of 35 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries that are eligible for market access under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). The announcement came on the eve of the 20th AGOA Forum in Johannesburg, South Africa, on the 2nd to 4th of November 2023. According to the US Government, CAR and Uganda have engaged in gross violations of internationally recognised human rights. This paper reflects on the decision, which is not the first by the Biden administration in the last few years. This paper argues that the recent decision by the US is an example of developed countries using trade incentives and sanctions to achieve their geopolitical interests in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) under the pretext of promoting human rights standards.

This public event is hosted by Afronomicslaw.org – the leading forum on international economic law issues relating to Africa, and Open Society Policy Center. This hybrid event will be streamed live on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter handles of Afronomicslaw.org.

Despite being the largest free trade agreement (FTA) in the world, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is often criticized as a shallow FTA. In this essay, however, we contend that the RCEP is better understood in the context of the great power rivalry between the United States and China. We argue that the RCEP marks China’s rise as a shaper of trade law norms and governance mechanisms, which intensifies great power competition. On the one hand, by solidifying the world’s largest regional trading bloc, including through enacting very liberal rules of origin, the RCEP tightens ties among Asian economies and counters the efforts of the US to divert supply chains away from China. On the other hand, the inclusion of new rules on issues like e-commerce in the RCEP illustrates the potential for some cooperation between the two countries over the governance of the emerging digital economy, despite considerable challenges. The essay concludes with thoughts on the options for the new US administration in dealing with China.