Why the U.S. Development Finance Corporation Shouldn’t be Used to Compete With China

When the U.S. Development Finance Corporation (DFC) was launched in 2019, a big part of its mandate from Congress was to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative. That sentiment was a key theme on Capitol Hill late last year during the DFC’s Congressional reauthorization, when lawmakers from both parties made urgent appeals for the agency to do more to challenge China in the Global South.

Congress nearly tripled the DRC’s budget from $60 billion to $205 billion to be used over the next five years. While that is a substantial increase, it’s just a small fraction of what Chinese entities spend each year on BRI projects.

Karthik Sankaran and Dan Ford, researchers at the Quincy Institute in Washington, D.C., join Eric to discuss why they contend it’s a bad idea for the DFC to compete head-on with China, rather than focus on its original mandate to build market capacity in poorer nations.

📌 Topics covered in this episode:

• The expanded mandate and six-year reauthorization of the US Development Finance Corporation
• Why countering China now drives US development finance strategy
• How the DFC compares with China’s Belt and Road Initiative
• The limits of development finance as a tool of great power competition
• Critical minerals energy, and supply chains as DFC priorities
• The Lobito Corridor and overlapping US-China interests
• Why Global South countries resist choosing sides
• How the DFC could compete more effectively by focusing on development

Show Notes:
Responsible Statecraft: US capital investments for something other than beating China by Karthik Sankaran and Dan Ford - https://tinyurl.com/yx6r3vsc

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