The Donald Trump administration is caught in the middle of a multi-­billion-dollar squabble between two mining giants for control of West Africa’s promising iron ore deposits, critical for making steel.

While the US made no secret of its support for the Lobito Corridor, a quieter but more contentious minerals-to-market push is taking place at the border between Guinea and Liberia. Dubbed the Liberty Corridor, the proposal would open up and expand Liberia’s existing rail infrastructure – at the expense of its largest foreign investor.

Ivanhoe vs ArcelorMittal

Pushing for a deal is US-Canadian mining tycoon Robert Friedland’s Ivanhoe Atlantic, which is looking to produce two million tonnes per year from early 2026 in Guinea – provided it has a cost-efficient way to get the minerals out.

Eager to have the US weigh in, Friedland tapped Trump’s former Africa envoy J. Peter Pham as chairman to help pitch the project.

“The discussion is around multi-­user infrastructure cross-border in Africa that can open up trade,” Ivanhoe CEO Bronwyn Barnes tells The Africa Report. “This is not about politics. This is about … opening supply chain lines and securing them for the US.”

On the other side of the debate is Luxembourg-based multinational ArcelorMittal (AML). The world’s second-largest steelmaker signed a 25-year mining agreement with Liberia in 2005 and feels threatened by the looming loss of control over once-abandoned infrastructure it revived after the civil war.

The Trump administration is closely tracking the situation, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosting Liberia’s Foreign Minister Sara Beysolow Nyanti to discuss deepening US commercial engagement in the country.

“The meeting explored expanding US participation in Liberia’s critical minerals sector with the aim of creating jobs and economic growth in the US and Liberia,” the department said. “[Rubio] praised the efforts of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) to develop US-friendly infrastructure projects.”

In 2019, Ivanhoe Atlantic, then HPX (High Power Exploration), acquired the rights to the Kon Kweni iron ore deposit in Guinea’s Nimba mountains. Friedland asked the Liberian government to use the existing rail corridor connecting the border town of Yekepa to the Atlantic Port of Buchanan.

With AML eager to extend its operational control over the 240km (150 mile) line past 2030, the two competitors launched a battle for influence in Monrovia. Ivanhoe caught a break in November 2023 with the election of President Joseph Boakai, an anti-corruption crusader critical of AML’s two-decades-long monopoly.

Wooing Liberia

“AML has said they are open to multi-use, but they want to have some measure of control,” Boakai told The Africa Report in an interview at the 2024 US-Africa Business Summit in Dallas. “Now, I do have a problem with that.”

He proposed a multi-use rail corridor run by an independent operator, open to mining rivals and Liberian agriculture and passengers.

Days before Boakai’s visit to Washington for Trump’s working lunch with five West African presidents, Ivanhoe signed a $1.8bn deal with Liberia to rehabilitate and access the rail line. Ivanhoe would need to build 40km (25 miles) of cross-border roads connecting its Guinea mine to the Liberia railhead.

Some US officials say multi-user rail would diversify the world supply of high-quality iron ore, boost regional integration and open up West Africa for US companies.

In July, Friedland, Pham and Barnes met with Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau in Washington to discuss their proposal. The Liberian parliament finished ratifying the deal on 18 December.

“Until it’s ratified, I cannot raise funds, I cannot engage with off-take partners, and I cannot commence construction,” says Barnes. “So it’s seen as the plug that is holding back my investment into West Africa.”

AML, for its part, says it has poured $3.5bn into Liberia’s “previously dormant” mining sector, including $800m to rehabilitate and expand rail capacity. The company invested $1.8bn for phase 2 of its expansion project, increasing capacity to transport 30m tonnes of iron ore annually.

“This is the largest foreign direct investment in Liberia and will see our iron ore production more than quadruple in 2026, with a corresponding increase in our contribution to Liberia’s budget through tax and royalty payments,” AML’s manager for corporate communications Paul Weigh said. “We have agreed to a non-discriminatory, multi-user access regime, provided others invest in adding capacity.”

Millennium Challenge Corporation revival

Liberty Corridor champions counter that the agreement incentivises AML to limit the railway’s expansion. “What [Arcelor] argue is, well, it’s multi-user to the extent that if there’s excess capacity, then other users can use that excess. So now they’re renovating only to the level of their needs,” says Troy Fitrell, former top official in the Bureau of African Affairs.

Sceptics say the Trump administration should conduct more due diligence before getting involved in a domestic African dispute with unclear benefits for the US.

With rumours flying about the Trump administration’s intentions, attention has turned to the MCC. In September, MCC acting MD for Africa Carrie Monahan led a delegation to Liberia to review the potential for a new compact.

Liberia earned a first MCC grant, worth $257m, to increase energy production in 2015. In 2024, Boakai said Joe Biden called with news the country was selected for a new MCC compact.

Trump’s election put funding in doubt after the MCC got in the crosshairs of Elon Musk and his now-disbanded Department of Government Efficiency. The MCC was resurrected in September with the pledge of a $300m electrification grant for Côte d’Ivoire.

“We put a lot of effort into saving it … but it will be a very different MCC,” says Fitrell. “It being for US companies and for major infrastructure that would benefit US activity, that is first and foremost.”

The MCC talks have prompted rumours that the US seeks to condition financial support to the Liberia parliament ratifying the Concession and Access Agreement with Ivanhoe. Fitrell says this would send a signal that Liberia is serious about the free-market reforms the MCC seeks. “The best way to show you’re a different kind of Liberian government is to approve this.”

With the agreement making its way through parliament, the MCC approved Liberia for a second compact that “positions the country to advance discussions on potential investment in priority sectors that support long-term development and self-reliance,” the US Embassy in Monrovia wrote in a cryptic Facebook post on 12 December that promised details in the new year.

Eyes on the prize

US interest in the Liberty Corridor has sparked furious lobbying in Washington. Worried about losing its lucrative rail monopoly, AML spent $1.2m in Q1-Q3 2025, according to public filings.

The company hired firms Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan in April to push “economic and mineral development in Liberia and US commercial interests”. They join Africa lobbyist Riva Levinson’s KRL International and Kelley Drye & Warren on the Arcelor payroll.

Bryan Cave subcontracted work to Navigators Global and Hollier & Associates, whose lobbyists include a former top Rubio aide in the Senate as well as a former deputy national security adviser in the Trump 2016 transition.

Allegations about Ivanhoe’s Chinese backers and improper US influence on the Liberian government have surfaced in US and African media, some levelling accusations against Pham, Fitrell and US Ambassador Mark Toner. The whisper campaign may have harmed more than helped AML in Washington.

“It’s a couple of half-truths, blown out of context, and it backfired,” insists Fitrell.

The accusations have not gone unnoticed, however. On 9 December the chairman of the House Select Committee on China, Republican Congressman John Moolenaar of Michigan, wrote a letter to Rubio questioning significant Chinese ownership stakes in Ivanhoe Mines, a sister company of Ivanhoe Atlantic.

Ivanhoe has retained the services of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck and Yorktown Solutions, paying a total of $170,000 per quarter. Yorktown is headed by a former aide to Texas Republican Ted Cruz, who now chairs the Senate Foreign Relations panel on Africa.

Looming over the debate is the largest known untapped deposit of high-grade iron ore in southeast Guinea’s Simandou mountains. Three decades after first exploration, Interim President Mamady Doumbouya attended the launch of production on 11 November. The mines are estimated to hold three billion tonnes of ore, with plans to produce 120m tonnes a year.

To get those minerals to market, the joint venture exploiting the Simandou site – Guinea, Anglo-Australian Rio Tinto and Chinese consortium Chalco Iron Ore Holdings – has invested some $20bn on a 600km (375-mile) TransGuinean Railway linking the mines to the new deepwater port at Matakong.

While Guinea is keen to use its rail system, routing any production through Liberia could be faster and cheaper if Simandou is ever linked to Nimba, about 200km (125 miles) to the south, and the Liberty Corridor.