An explosive public feud has broken out this week between the United States and Zambia.<\/p>\n
The two nations were negotiating a deal to provide billions of dollars in U.S. health funding, but the outgoing U.S. ambassador publicly accused the Zambian government last week of graft and negotiating in bad faith.<\/p>\n
Zambia\u2019s foreign minister fired back on Monday, accusing the United States of linking aid to access to the critical minerals<\/a> of the southern African nation.<\/p>\n The tussle spotlights the Trump administration\u2019s push to overhaul U.S. foreign aid, replacing the foreign assistance provided by the United States Agency for International Development with an \u201cAmerica First\u201d alternative. Mr. Trump, along with tech tycoon Elon Musk, dismantled the aid agency last year, accusing it of being wasteful.<\/p>\n The Trump administration has said countries should shoulder more of their own health funding, and that about two dozen African countries have already signed agreements. But a number have also walked away, citing the United States\u2019 request for private health data, among other issues.<\/p>\n Zambia, Ghana and Zimbabwe have all turned down the Trump administration. Kenya signed, but the deal is being held up in court.<\/p>\n \u201cAny deal that is exchanging human lives for access to critical minerals is immoral,\u201d said Jonas Chanda, the former Zambian health minister.<\/p>\n Zambia is among the world\u2019s major copper producers and has large reserves of minerals like lithium and cobalt.<\/p>\n Some analysts say that the Trump administration is pressuring Zambia to provide mining access to American companies in a nation where China currently dominates. A draft of a memo containing the deal\u2019s health provisions, obtained by The New York Times<\/a>, showed stipulations that would grant American businesses greater access to Zambia\u2019s mineral deposits, effectively ending China\u2019s hold.<\/p>\n But in his remarks, outgoing U.S. ambassador, Michael Gonzales, said Washington was not trying to leverage foreign aid into greater access to Zambia\u2019s mines.<\/p>\n \u201cAny suggestion that the United States would withhold critical lifesaving health care support from those Zambians whose lives, whose health depend on it, unless we get critical minerals, is disgusting,\u201d he said during a farewell speech. \u201cIt is absolutely, patently false.\u201d<\/p>\n Updated\u00a0<\/p>\n May 7, 2026, 9:21 p.m. ET<\/p>\n Zambia\u2019s foreign minister, Mulambo Haimbe, said in a six-page response that the issue of critical minerals had been a major roadblock in the negotiations, adding that Mr. Gonzales had made untrue statements to distort \u201cthe real reasons\u201d for the stalled talks.<\/p>\n Mr. Haimbe said that as Mr. Gonzales has approached the end of his tenure in Zambia, he has engaged in \u201ca deliberate shift away from diplomatic etiquette and an increasingly acrimonious change in attitude.\u201d<\/p>\n Appointed in 2022 by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Mr. Gonzales is a career diplomat who has openly embraced Mr. Trump\u2019s agenda in his second term. He held a tearful news conference last year announcing that the United States would cut $50 million in annual aid for medicines and medical supplies to Zambia, saying that an assessment had found \u201csystematic theft\u201d of U.S.-donated drugs intended for free distribution.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are no longer willing to underwrite the personal enrichment of fraudsters or the corrupt,\u201d Mr. Gonzales said at the time.<\/p>\n