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WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump will host leaders of five Central Asian countries at the White House on Thursday as he steps up the hunt for rare earth metals needed for high-tech devices including smartphones, electric vehicles and fighter jets.
Trump and officials from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are holding an evening summit and dinner as Trump manages at least a temporary thaw with Chinese leader Xi Jinping over differences between the United States and China over exports of rare earth elements, a major point of friction in their trade talks.
Earlier last month, Beijing expanded export restrictions on critical rare earth elements and magnets before announcing after Trump-Xi talks in South Korea last week that China would delay its new restrictions by a year.
Washington is now looking for new ways to circumvent China on critical minerals. China accounts for about 70% of the world’s rare earth mining and controls about 90% of global rare earth processing.
Central Asia has deep deposits of rare earth minerals and produces about half the world’s uranium, which is important for nuclear power generation. But this sector is in dire need of investment to further develop the resources.
Central Asia’s vital mineral exports have long been tilted toward China and Russia. For example, Kazakhstan sent $3.07 billion in critical minerals to China and $1.8 billion to Russia in 2023, while sending $544 million to the US, according to country-level trade data compiled by the Observatory of Economic Complexity, an online data platform.
A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation Wednesday to repeal Soviet-era trade sanctions that some lawmakers say are blocking U.S. investment in the Central Asian countries, which became independent with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
“Today, it is not too late to deepen our cooperation and ensure that these countries can determine their own destinies, as an unstable Russia and an increasingly aggressive China pursue their national interests around the world at the expense of their neighbors,” said Republican Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and sponsor of the legislation. “The United States offers Central Asian countries a real opportunity to work with a willing partner while lifting each other’s economies.”
The group of countries, known as the “C5 1”, has largely focused on regional security, particularly in light of the two-decade US military presence and then withdrawal from neighboring Afghanistan, China’s treatment of ethnic Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang and efforts by Russia to re-establish power in the region.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio welcomed Central Asian leaders to the State Department on Wednesday to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the C51 and mark the prospects for expanding the countries’ economic ties with the United States.
“We often spend so much time focusing on crises and problems – and they deserve attention – that sometimes we don’t spend enough time focusing on exciting new opportunities,” Rubio said. “And that is what exists here now: an exciting new opportunity in which the national interests of our respective countries are aligned.”
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and the US Ambassador to India, Sergio Gore, who also serves as President Donald Trump’s special envoy to South and Central Asia, recently visited Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to prepare for the summit.
Administration officials say they have made clear to Central Asian officials that deepening U.S. ties with the countries is a priority.
“The president’s commitment to the region is that you have a direct line to the White House, and you will get the attention that this region so richly deserves,” Gore told Central Asian officials on Wednesday.
In 2023, Democratic President Joe Biden meets the five leaders on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. This was the only other time that a sitting president attended a C5 1 summit.
Diplomat writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without any modifications to the text.
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