{"id":1254,"date":"2026-06-29T02:43:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T02:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/?p=1254"},"modified":"2026-06-29T02:43:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T02:43:14","slug":"trump-sons-profiting-from-mining-deals-for-tungsten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/trump-sons-profiting-from-mining-deals-for-tungsten\/","title":{"rendered":"TRUMP SONS PROFITING FROM MINING DEALS FOR TUNGSTEN"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Trump Cut a Billion-Dollar Mining Deal. His Sons Stand to Profit.<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Outside the village of Unrek, in rural Kazakhstan, the Soviet Union dug holes into the earth during the Cold War to prospect for tungsten. An American company plans to break ground there again.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>By Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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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\u2019s largest untapped reserves of tungsten.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n

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When Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick met with Kazakhstan\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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,<\/a> which plans to break ground on the project in rural Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n

It was not only Mr. Trump and Mr. Lutnick who saw an opportunity.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Around the same time, Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment company controlled by Mr. Lutnick\u2019s family and overseen by his sons Brandon and Kyle Lutnick, helped<\/a> one of the lead investors working with Dominari on the Kazakh deal raise $210 million<\/a> in new capital for a related entity. Such rounds of fund-raising typically net Cantor millions of dollars in fees.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Image<\/span><\/p>\n
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Kyle Lutnick, left, and his brother Brandon Lutnick in September in Atlantic City.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Arturo Holmes\/Getty Images for REFORM Alliance<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Donald Trump Jr., left, and Eric Trump in August at the Nasdaq Market in Manhattan.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Eduardo Munoz\/Reuters<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Kazakh deal<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The 14 companies working on critical mining deals with the U.S. government that have ties to Cantor Fitzgerald or the Trump family.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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USA Rare Earth<\/h3>\n

Approved to receive up to $1.3 billion in Commerce loans and $277 million in direct federal funding to accelerate neodymium-iron-boron magnet production and potentially another $565 million for rare earths mine in Brazil now held by a company it is acquiring.<\/p>\n

Ties:<\/b> Cantor Fitzgerald as lead agent on capital raise<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Kaz Resources<\/h3>\n

Pursuing $900 million in financing from the Export-Import Bank and up to $700 million from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation to support plan to build tungsten mine in Kazakstan<\/p>\n

Ties:<\/b> Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr. are investors in firms involved in the deal; Dominari, another firm the Trump sons own in part, has financial ties to the deal. Cantor Fitzgerald helped one partner in the deal raise capital<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Perpetua Resources<\/h3>\n

Approved for a $2.9 billion loan from the Export-Import Bank for a central Idaho gold and antimony project<\/p>\n

Ties:<\/b> Cantor Fitzgerald as underwriter<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
Trump Cut a Billion-Dollar Mining Deal. His Sons Stand to Profit. – The New York Times<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n
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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.<\/p>\n

Now, the families\u2019 ethically tangled pursuit of profits is extending to the new arms race for critical minerals.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cCongress needs to make sure that taxpayer dollars are being used in the public\u2019s interest and not to benefit family members or those closely tied with the Trump administration,\u201d Ms. Dexter said in an interview.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only special interest guiding the Trump administration\u2019s decision-making is the best interest of the American people,\u201d Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said in a statement to The Times. \u201cSecuring and reshoring America\u2019s 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\u2019s national and economic security.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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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<\/a> in Commerce Department financing this month.<\/p>\n

He has proved to be a savvy player, soliciting \u2014 and receiving \u2014 direct support from top-level federal officials, including Mr. Lutnick, in his efforts to secure deals.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s sons and did not know they were involved. He later came to learn about the Trump family\u2019s participation and understood how that might generate questions, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can see how the optics might be disturbing to some people,\u201d Mr. Althaus said. \u201cBut that\u2019s unfortunate because this company and this project goes way beyond any one president, let alone any family.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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