Kazakhstan Courts Washington With Tungsten Deal, Calling Trump 'Sent by Heaven'

Kazakhstan is aggressively courting Washington to balance against its two powerful neighbors, Russia and China, and its leader has gone so far as to describe President Trump as "sent by heaven," the New York Times reported. The core of the effort is access to critical minerals, the metals that underpin advanced manufacturing and defense.

Central to the arrangement is tungsten, a hard metal essential to munitions and industrial tooling. A US-Kazakh agreement has given a group of American investors access to one of the world's largest untapped tungsten reserves, the New York Times also reported, noting that the investors include people with ties to the president and the commerce secretary, which raises questions about who would profit from a state-brokered deal.

The strategic logic is the contest over supply chains. China dominates global processing of many critical minerals, and Washington has been seeking alternative sources outside Chinese control. For Kazakhstan, a deal with the United States is a way to dilute the influence of Moscow and Beijing without openly breaking from either.