WASHINGTON — Working to salvage an aid package for Ukraine, Republican senators pitched an idea to the former president donald trump they thought he would like: instead of a grant, the US would give the country a loan that would be backed in some way by Ukrainian rare earth minerals worth trillions of dollars.
GOP lawmakers knew they needed Trump’s support if they wanted to ensure the former president wouldn’t use his influence in Congress to sink the aid package Ukraine needed to defend itself from the Russian invasion.
That specific plan was not included in the final legislation that President Joe Biden signed law last month. Ukraine received a loan instead of a grant – fulfilling Trump’s promise limit rrequirement – although there was no mention of the country’s minerals as a potential means of repayment.
Still, Trump liked the concept, said GOP lawmakers who spoke with him, and if he wins the election, some envision a new model in which the U.S. structures foreign aid not as grants but instead as loans with countries that provide natural resources. or other valuable assets as collateral.
“If Trump wins, we will see more of this, not less,” he said. Senator Lindsey Graham, R-SC, one of the senators who spoke with Trump about the relief package. “This will be a new way of providing help. I’ve learned from these long, drawn-out conflicts that audiences get tired. So it’s past time to be creative.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said in an interview that he has not studied the idea, but “I think it makes a lot of sense for the money we provide to Ukraine to be treated as a loan and not a gift. There is a huge need for rare earth minerals. And so, finding a way to utilize these minerals to benefit America and Ukraine seems like a common sense step.”
Some foreign policy analysts disagree. Smaller countries receiving such loans may not want to see valuable natural resources gobbled up by richer nations with the influence to dictate financial terms.
Such a deal smacks of colonialism and is unlikely to endear the United States to nations forced to give up unique natural resources in exchange for valuable aid, one analyst said. China, for example, generated some international ill will by lending money to onerous terms which smaller and poorer countries have been hard pressed to repay.
“It would reaffirm the idea that rich countries are only interested in their [smaller nations’] physical assets and wealth and are not really interested in development,” said William Reinsch, a senior consultant at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who specializes in international trade and economic policy. “That would make our relations with these countries more difficult – which doesn’t mean they wouldn’t do it, but that they would be dissatisfied with it.”
Trump sees foreign relations as a cost-benefit proposition, to some extent. As president, one of his priorities was to eliminate US trade deficits with other countries. He complained loudly about NATO allies failing to meet obligations to spend 2% of gross domestic product on defense, going so far as to say in February that he would leave Russia.”do whatever the hell they want“for European nations that have not met their financial obligations.
One spoil from the costly US war in Iraq should have been the country’s oil reserves, he told NBC News in 2016.
“We went in and spent $3 trillion. We lose thousands and thousands of lives and then look, what happens is we gain nothing,” he said at the time.”
“Now, there was no winner there, believe me. There was no victory. But I always said, get the oil,” she added.
“Trump has been like this since day one,” Graham said, explaining Trump’s position. “He didn’t literally mean, ‘Take their oil.’ He said we should have the oil as collateral because they could give it back.”
Ukraine has “a lot of critical minerals, potentially trillions,” Graham added. “Get them back on their feet. And if they become a robust economy, then pass it on. If they don’t, we understand. But his [Trump’s] The point is you need to have some leverage, and loans give you leverage, and he thinks the American taxpayer would support more approaches like this.”
“This is not something we are considering doing,” said a White House National Security Council official when asked whether the White House supports lending to other countries if they provide natural resources as collateral.
Asked about Trump’s views, campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a prepared statement that the former president “believes European nations should pay more for the cost of the conflict.” [in Ukraine]as the US paid significantly more, which is not fair to our taxpayers.”
Lawmakers from both parties acknowledged that Trump’s stance against the Ukraine aid package could have sunk the bill and locked Ukraine into a two-year war with Russia. They saw an opportunity to win him over in February, shortly after Trump wrote in his Truth social site on February 10 that a loan is the only acceptable way to provide foreign aid.
Shortly after Trump’s post, GOP lawmakers hosted a conference call with Trump that included Graham, Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Oklahoma, and others, in which they discussed the possibility of tying Ukraine’s mineral supplies to the aid package. .
Trump agreed “immediately,” Mullin said.
“None of us [the lawmakers] could have made this deal happen,” Mullin said in his Capitol office. “It depended on Trump being comfortable with this, because he gives Republicans, in a political year, political cover. But it’s also sound policy.”
“Right now, we are managing [mineral resources] from China. That’s everything we need to make the chips and the batteries – a lot of things we need. So it would be great to do business with a true friend or ally of ours rather than an adversary.”
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
