LONG PHU, Vietnam — The towering lattice of blue steel girders rising above banana and lemongrass crops near Vietnam’s southern coast stands as public testament to the country’s drive to burn coal.

With help from a Kremlin-connected Russian bank, Vietnam is building a coal-fired power plant called Long Phu 1 that will produce an estimated 5.4 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, generating enough electricity to power millions of homes.

But the project needs something else first: help from the United States government.

The plant’s state-controlled owner has applied for assistance with the project from the Export-Import Bank of the United States. If the bank agrees, American taxpayers will shoulder the financial risk behind Vietnam’s purchase of millions of dollars’ worth of turbines and other equipment from General Electric.

The bank has not yet decided whether it will back the project. If it did, it would show that the Trump administration’s commitment to using more coal at home also extended overseas. Critics say it would also challenge a growing global consensus that developed nations and groups like the World Bank should stop funding high-polluting energy projects in developing countries. Britain’s equivalent of the Export-Import Bank has already declined to participate in the project.