US President Donald Trump unveiled a slew of trade, diplomatic, and mineral deals as he hosted Central Asia’s five leaders for a summit and dinner meant to shore up Washington’s influence in the region.
Flanked by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance at a long table at the White House, Trump said that he was comitted to making the United States’ relations with Central Asia “stronger than ever” as the presidents of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan hailed a new era of ties.
Prior to their working dinner, Kazakhstan announced a major mineral deal through a new joint partnership with the United States to develop one of the world’s largest untapped deposits of tungsten in the Central Asian country.
The deal will see the US company Cove Kaz Capital Group take a 70 percent stake in the venture alongside Kazakhstan’s state mining firm and is estimated to cost $1.1 billion, while the US Export-Import Bank has issued a letter of interest to fund $900 million.
Among other takeaways from the summit was a still yet to be fully detailed deal to sell up to a combined 37 Boeing jets to the national airlines of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. On the diplomatic front, Kazakhstan said it expects to join the Abraham Accords, the US-led framework for cooperation between Israel and Arab and Muslim nations.
US officials said the summit is meant to signal a new US commitment to engage with Central Asia more steadily.
“We oftentimes spend so much time focused on crises and problems – and they deserve attention — that sometimes we don’t spend enough time focused on exciting new opportunities,” Rubio said at a working breakfast with the five Central Asian leaders earlier on November 6.
“And that’s what exists here now: an exciting new opportunity in which the national interests of our respective countries are aligned.”
A New Chapter In Central Asia’s US Playbook
Central Asia is looking to balance its trade and security relationships that remain dominated by China and Russia by deepening ties with the United States.
The summit in Washington follows other efforts by major powers this year to deepen the relationship with the region. Russian President Vladimir Putin joined a summit in Tajikistan in September with other Central Asian leaders and Chinese leader Xi Jinping traveled to Kazakhstan in June for a meeting with the region’s presidents.
The European Union also held a summit with the region’s leaders in April in Uzbekistan to talk about infrastructure investments and accessing Central Asia’s critical minerals.
That mineral wealth was once again the focus in Washington, with the region’s deep reserves of rare earths — 17 elements used in everything from wind turbines to smartphones to fighter jet engines — and vast deposits of uranium, copper, gold, and other strategic minerals essential to global efforts to transition to greener forms of energy a key focus.
Pini Althaus, the CEO of Cove Kaz Capital Group that struck the tungsten deal in Kazakhstan, called the agreement “a generational win for the US and its critical minerals needs” and told Reuters that Trump and US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick helped negotiate the deal to prevent Chinese companies from developing the strategic deposit.
Ben Godwin, head of analysis at PRISM, a strategic intelligence firm in London, told RFE/RL that the summit’s focus on Central Asia’s mineral wealth is part of a longstanding strategy from the region’s leaders to win Washington’s attention.
“The Central Asians are absolutely using this critical minerals angle as their leverage point to get more engagement from the United States on other issues that are more important to the region and the local economies,” he said.
“In the 2000s, it was the War on Terror and oil and gas. Then there was a decarbonization era were many new projects in Central Asia were centered around renewable energy,” Godwin told RFE/RL. “Now it’s the role of critical minerals in national security.”
The deals follow a truce in Beijing and Washington’s trade war and accelerating competition between the United States and China over the export of rare earth elements — a key point of friction in their trade negotiations.
That resulted in a one year pause on some of China’s export restrictions on rare earths following a late October meeting between Trump and Xi.
Washington is now looking for new ways to circumvent Beijing on the metals. China accounts for nearly 70 percent of the world’s rare earth mining and controls roughly 90 percent of their processing.
While Central Asia could be a long term source, the region is hoping the badly needed new investment will help it develop the resources.
A new report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank, said that “Chinese and Russian capital dominate the region’s mining, processing, and logistics networks” and warned that “structural barriers, ranging from underdeveloped westward transport routes to recurring energy shortages, continue to deter Western investment.”
The Trump administration added 10 minerals on November 6 to a list it deems essential for the US economy and national security, including copper, vital to electric vehicles, power grids, and data centers, and metallurgical coal, used to make coke fuel for steel production.
Kazakhstan Joins A US Diplomatic Push On The Abraham Accords
The decision to join the Abraham Accords, a hallmark achievement of Trump’s first term in office, puts Kazakhstan at the center of a new push by the White House to reinvigorate the foreign policy initiative.
The Abraham Accords were designed as a way to bolster cooperation between Israel and the Muslim world, with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco signing the agreement in 2020 to normalize their relations. The Trump administration is reportedly looking to expand the initiative and it will be a focus of a planned visit to Washington on November 18 by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev reportedly held a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to announce Kazakhstan’s intention to join, although Astana has already maintained full diplomatic ties with Israel for more than 30 years.
But Joseph Epstein, director of the Washington-based Yorktown Institute’s Turan Research Center, told RFE/RL that while the move by Kazakhstan may appear symbolic, it could hold diplomatic weight moving forward.
“Astana’s decision to join the Abraham Accords marks the beginning of a new phase, transforming the accords from a Middle East peace initiative to a pro-US coalition of moderate Muslim countries devoted to tolerance and prosperity,” Epstein said.
