US Kazakhstan Critical Minerals Deal
Links with Trump and Lutnick
An agreement between the U.S. and
Kazakhstan has given a group of American investors with ties to the president
and the commerce secretary access to one of the world’s largest untapped
reserves of tungsten.
·
The controversy
centres on a major tungsten mining project in Kazakhstan, considered strategically
important for US defence, semiconductor and aerospace industries.
·
During a meeting
with Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in September 2025, Trump reportedly intervened
by phone to help secure Kazakhstan's approval for the project.
·
Ahead of the
agreement, the Trump administration approved preliminary applications for up to
US$1.6 billion in federal financing for Kaz Resources, the company
developing the mine.
·
Within weeks
of the negotiations, investors linked to Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump
acquired a 20% stake in a corporate entity associated with the Kazakhstan
project.
·
Around the
same time, investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald, controlled by the Lutnick family,
helped raise US$210 million for a related mining entity, potentially earning
substantial fees.
·
The mining
agreement was formally signed on 6 November 2025, six days after the Trump
family-linked investment.
·
The report
says the Trump and Lutnick families have financial ties to at least 14 companies
involved in critical mineral projects that are receiving or seeking federal assistance.
·
These companies
have collectively received or are seeking more than US$8.9 billion in federal
funding or approvals.
·
Critics argue
the overlap between government policymaking and family business interests raises
serious ethical concerns and potential conflicts of interest.
·
Maxine Dexter called for
congressional oversight to ensure taxpayer funds are used in the public interest
rather than benefiting families connected to the administration.
·
The White
House and the Commerce Department rejected allegations of impropriety,
stating that decisions are driven solely by US national and economic security interests.
·
Pini Althaus, who leads
the Kazakhstan project, said discussions began during the previous administration
and denied receiving political favours.
·
Althaus acknowledged
that the Trump family's investment could create negative perceptions but maintained
that the project serves long-term US strategic interests.
·
The project
aims to develop one of the world's largest untapped tungsten deposits, with
estimated resources valued at up to US$80 billion and potential production
of 12,000 metric tonnes annually.
·
China currently
dominates global tungsten production, while recent Chinese export restrictions have
increased the strategic importance of securing alternative supplies.
·
Since Trump
returned to office, the US government has approved or conditionally backed 60
critical minerals projects worth US$18.6 billion, marking the largest
federal investment in the sector to date.
·
Kazakhstan
is positioning itself as a key supplier of critical minerals, capable of producing
and processing 25 of the 60 minerals on the US critical minerals list.
[ABS News Service/29.06.2026]
When
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick met with Kazakhstan’s president at the St.
Regis Hotel last September in New York, President Trump jumped in by phone as
the men sealed a deal on a top priority for Washington.
During
the call, Mr. Trump and his team won an agreement from the Kazakh leader to
give a little-known American company access to one of the world’s largest
untapped reserves of tungsten, a metal that the United States desperately needs
for the production of missile warheads, fighter jets, computer chips and other
critical goods.
Ahead
of the deal, the Trump administration approved preliminary applications for as
much as $1.6 billion in federal financing for the American company, now called
Kaz Resources, which plans to break ground on the project in rural Kazakhstan.
It
was not only Mr. Trump and Mr. Lutnick who saw an opportunity.
Their
sons were soon doing business with partners in a deal that their fathers were
negotiating, continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in the second Trump
administration that has few precedents in American history.
Within
weeks of the St. Regis negotiations, investors with a firm called Dominari Securities, which is housed at Trump Tower in New
York and partly owned by the president’s two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and
Eric Trump, joined with other partners to take a 20 percent stake in a
corporate entity related to the Kazakhstan project.
Around
the same time, Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment company controlled by Mr.
Lutnick’s family and overseen by his sons Brandon and Kyle Lutnick, helped one
of the lead investors working with Dominari on the
Kazakh deal raise $210 million in new capital for a related entity. Such rounds
of fund-raising typically net Cantor millions of dollars in fees.
The
Kazakh deal was ultimately signed on Nov. 6, six days after the investment
involving the Trump sons and their partners, which was not publicly disclosed
at the time.
The
arrangement is hardly an outlier. One or both families have financial ties to
at least 14 companies that are actively working with the federal government on
critical mining deals, including the Kazakhstan project, according to federal
filings examined by The New York Times.
All
14 of these companies have either benefited directly from offers of financial
assistance from the Trump administration, or have pending permit applications
before the Commerce Department, which Mr. Lutnick oversees, The Times found.
The total amount of federal funding that the Trump administration has provided
or is considering providing to the companies exceeds $8.9 billion, according to
public statements by the companies and federal government.
This
emboldened mixing of federal policymaking and personal business began shortly
after Mr. Trump returned to office last year, when the Trump and Lutnick sons
played a role in billions of dollars of cryptocurrency deals as the fathers
helped set policies that supercharged the crypto industry.
Now,
the families’ ethically tangled pursuit of profits is extending to the new arms
race for critical minerals.
These
kinds of deals are a warning sign, said Representative Maxine Dexter of Oregon,
the top Democrat on the House panel that investigates accusations of wrongdoing
in the mining industry.
“Congress
needs to make sure that taxpayer dollars are being used in the public’s
interest and not to benefit family members or those closely tied with the Trump
administration,” Ms. Dexter said in an interview.
The
White House and the Commerce Department, in separate statements, rejected any
suggestion that the Trump administration was improperly mixing government
actions with family business.
“The
only special interest guiding the Trump administration’s decision-making is the
best interest of the American people,” Kush Desai, a White House spokesman,
said in a statement to The Times. “Securing and reshoring America’s critical
supply chains has been a top priority for President Trump, and Secretary
Lutnick along with the rest of the administration continue to take historic
action to safeguard America’s national and economic security.”
At
the center of the Kazakhstan deal is an
Australia-born rabbi named Pini Althaus, who moved to the United States years
ago and set his sights on critical minerals.
Mr.
Althaus is the executive chairman of Kaz Resources and the related company that
will mine the Kazakh tungsten deposit, and he remains a shareholder in another
critical minerals firm he founded that secured up to $1.6 billion in Commerce
Department financing this month.
He
has proved to be a savvy player, soliciting — and receiving — direct support
from top-level federal officials, including Mr. Lutnick, in his efforts to
secure deals.
In
a series of interviews, he said his discussions with the U.S. government about
the tungsten deal started during the Biden administration and did not benefit
from any political favors.
Mr.
Althaus said that in the weeks after the St. Regis meeting, he was approached
by new investors, but that he had never met Mr. Trump’s sons and did not know
they were involved. He later came to learn about the Trump family’s
participation and understood how that might generate questions, he said.
“I
can see how the optics might be disturbing to some people,” Mr. Althaus said.
“But that’s unfortunate because this company and this project goes way beyond
any one president, let alone any family.”
Central Asia’s Promise
Past
the herds of free-roaming horses, the abandoned skeleton of a Soviet worker
village and the rolling hills of a verdant Kazakh steppe are the giant
water-filled craters at the center of the U.S. deal.
Here,
outside the village of Unrek, population 407, the
little lakes mark the places where the Soviet Union dug holes to prospect for
tungsten.
With
its exceptional hardness, density and high melting point, tungsten became known
as the “war metal,” with key uses in munitions, aviation and weapons.
The
Soviet Union’s collapse interrupted its plans for new mines in Kazakhstan, a
former Soviet republic. Tungsten mining in the United States also petered out,
with the last operating U.S. mine, in Utah, ceasing production about a decade
ago.
China
came to dominate the global tungsten trade. But as Mr. Trump was returning to
the White House, Beijing began restricting tungsten and other critical mineral
exports, sending the benchmark price for the metal outside China surging
sixfold in the past year.
Mr.
Trump and his aides responded by pushing through, with the help of Congress, a
giant wave of federal funding to bankroll a new generation of U.S. mining
firms.
Since
Mr. Trump returned to office, the federal government has given conditional or
final approval to 60 critical minerals projects worldwide backed by $18.6
billion in federal loans, loan guarantees or other financing, according to a
count in May by BMO Capital Markets, a leading bank in the sector. That is the
largest amount in U.S. history, a bank executive said.
The
Pentagon and the Export-Import Bank, where Mr. Lutnick sits on the board, are
among the federal agencies bankrolling the push. The moves have created a
modern-day gold rush in the critical minerals industry, as start-ups seek to
get a chunk of the federal largess.
For
example, Donald Trump Jr. is a partner at another investment firm that last
summer took a stake in a tiny start-up mining company called Vulcan Elements.
Months later, the company signed a nearly $700 million deal with the federal
government to help finance the expansion of its production in North Carolina.
“The
level of activity compared to, say, 2023 is like night and day,” said Max
Yerrill, a BMO vice president. “It has been one of the hottest sectors.”
For
Kazakh officials, such deals offer their landlocked nation a new calling card
in foreign affairs and an entree with Mr. Trump.
The
country can produce and process 25 of the 60 commodities on the U.S. critical
minerals list, according to Olzhas Alibekov, a top
official at Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Industry and Construction.
“Kazakhstan
is positioning itself as an important player in the global rare and rare earth
metals market,” said Nurlan Zhakupov, the chief executive of the Kazakh
sovereign wealth fund, which owns the state mining company that is partnering
with Kaz Resources on the tungsten project.
That
project will require a huge investment, which Mr. Althaus estimates will total
about $650 million initially and $1.1 billion over the life of the project.
According to his firm’s own calculations, the tungsten there might be worth as
much as $80 billion.
His
company could not make the project happen by itself. He needed the U.S.
government to cut a deal with Kazakhstan at the highest levels, and to pledge
financing to make the math work. In return, the United States could get access
to an estimated 12,000 metric tons of tungsten a year, about as much as is now
imported annually.
A New York Deal
At
the St. Regis Hotel that day in September 2025, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev
of Kazakhstan was in the middle of a speed-dating-like procession of meetings
with executives from corporate giants like Citigroup, Amazon and Chevron.
Among
Mr. Tokayev’s corporate guests was Mr. Althaus, who was there to push
Kazakhstan to approve the mining project. Mr. Lutnick had his own audience with
the Kazakh president at the hotel that day.
“You
have great critical minerals that we can invest in together,” the commerce
secretary told Mr. Tokayev, according to a recording of parts of the meeting
that the Kazakh leader posted on social media.
Mr.
Lutnick had made a number of moves over several months to help push along the
deal.
He
sent a letter last year to Mr. Tokayev urging the country to give the contract
to Mr. Althaus and his financial backers, telling them that the Trump
administration “fully supports” the company (then known as Cove Kaz) in its
efforts.
The
Export-Import Bank and a second federal agency where Mr. Lutnick is also on the board, the U.S. International Development
Finance Corporation, each issued letters of interest last summer to provide Mr.
Althaus’s firm with tentative financing for the project. Those loans together
could be worth as much as $1.6 billion.
By
the time of the St. Regis meeting, Mr. Lutnick was closing in on securing Mr.
Tokayev’s agreement for the deal. That is when Mr. Trump called in.
“President
Trump, Secretary Lutnick and Secretary Rubio all personally got involved,” said
Mr. Althaus, who did not attend the closed-door meeting. “President Trump did
the final negotiation with President Tokayev for this deal.”
Chinese
bidders were also looking to get access to the Kazakh tungsten site, which is
one reason Mr. Althaus needed help from the U.S. government.
The
final signing took place on Nov. 6, during a high-profile summit in Washington,
where Mr. Trump welcomed the five leaders of Central Asia and highlighted his
interest in their critical minerals.