Minerals diplomacy opens doors, but questions linger over Pakistan’s capacity to benefit from the $500m deal.
When Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif meets US President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday, he will be carrying with him a promise unlike any that his predecessors have taken to such meetings.
For several years, Pakistan’s primary strategic value to the United States was its role as a security partner, first during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and then during the so-called “war on terror”.
That relationship slowly collapsed amid accusations from growing sections of the US strategic community – and Trump himself – that Islamabad was duplicitous and couldn’t be trusted, especially after American forces found Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
But a high-profile signing ceremony at the Pakistan PM’s residence earlier this month provided a glimpse of the country’s new offer to the US. On September 8, two memorandums of understanding (MoUs) were signed in a ceremony attended by Sharif and Pakistan’s army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, alongside senior officials from both Islamabad and Washington.
The headline agreement – on Pakistan supplying critical minerals and rare earth elements to the US – followed Trump’s July pledge to work with Pakistan to develop its “massive oil reserves”. A US firm is investing $500m in Pakistani minerals.
So far, Pakistan’s approach appears to be working, amid a broader rapprochement with the US that few analysts had predicted when Trump – who in 2018 claimed that Islamabad had given Washington “nothing but lies and deceit” – returned to office earlier this year.
Trump thanked Pakistan in a March speech to the US Congress for its support in combatting “terrorism”, and his military leaders have likewise credited the country for their partnership. Pakistan publicly endorsed the US president for a Nobel Prize in June after a four-day conflict with India that Washington and Islamabad insist ended with his mediation.
The 19 percent tariff rate that Trump has imposed on Pakistani goods is the lowest of all South Asian nations — India, Pakistan’s rival and America’s preferred partner over the past two decades, has been slapped with 50 percent tariffs. The US president has hosted Munir at the White House — the first time ever for a Pakistani army chief who is not head of state. And Sharif on Thursday will become the first Pakistani PM since 2019 to visit the US president’s residence.
It is a striking pivot from Trump, and analysts say that Pakistan’s minerals promise could play a key catalyst role. Washington is seeking sources of minerals and rare earths it views as essential to industry, defence and the clean-energy transition, and Pakistan may be an attractive, if as yet under-tested, supplier.
“This isn’t just about rocks in the ground. It is about who controls the future’s building blocks. For Pakistan, it’s a chance to claim its mineral narrative and tie it to national pride and legacy. For the US, it’s a strategic move on the global chessboard of resource politics.”