This trade barrier was not erected by Trump. It came from legislation hailed by many Democrats now critical of Trump tariffs. It’s from the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul.
Amid controversies over tariffs and their effects, one particularly destructive barrier to trade has gone overlooked: restrictions on “conflict minerals” that exacerbate poverty in the developing world, undermine U.S. access to rare earth metals and critical minerals, and hand a competitive edge to China in control of the global supply of these critical minerals.
Ironically, this trade barrier was not erected by President Donald Trump. It came from legislation hailed by many Democrats now critical of Trump tariffs. Nor did it come from legislation particularly geared to trade. Rather, this obstruction of trade was a last-minute insertion into the Dodd-Frank financial regulation overhaul signed by President Barack Obama 15 years ago in July 2010.
Dodd-Frank’s Section 1502 targets the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which has recently been a focus of the Trump’s administration’s strategic plans to access rare earths and other critical minerals to ensure a steady supply not reliant on China. The DRC has one of the richest mineral supplies in the world but is plagued by violence from warlords and militias, including a July 27 attack on a Catholic church that left at least 49 worshipers dead.
The Trump administration’s African diplomatic team has made headway in striking a deal with the nation in which the U.S. would provide security assistance to the DRC government in its fight against warlords in return for U.S. access to critical minerals within the country. But any such deal would likely be threatened by Section 1502, effectively a prohibitive backdoor tariff on many U.
