Global Warning with Ryan McBeth
Jul 5, 2026 · 18 min · 10 segments
On this week’s Global Warning: - China Flexes Its Economic Muscle on Apples and AI. <!--THE END--> - American college and university students can’t perform academically. <!--THE END--> - What the…
Ryan McBethHost
A new mineral deal has come to light in reporting by the New York Times, which has uncovered the Trump administration's push to secure critical minerals and deals with countries outside of China.
This new deal, worth over a billion dollars, is 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.
While the deal ultimately benefits the United States, including members of Trump's family, it would be incorrect to say it also doesn't benefit a country like Kazakhstan.
For Kazakhstan, there are very few options outside of two powers that it is sandwiched between, that is Russia and China.
This has led Kazakhstan to seek a greater independence and security by inviting investment from countries further afield.
They include the United States, European nations like the Netherlands and Switzerland, South Korea, Turkey, and several in the Middle East.
Increasingly, this doesn't mean that Kazakhstan isn't totally shunning Russia or even China.
Kazakhstan is a junior partner to Russia in a NATO-like military alliance and a European Union-like trade bloc.
But that hasn't stopped its leaders from aggressively courting Washington under President Trump, promising a slew of business deals, a series of high-level marketings, and a frenzy of engagement with American companies.
Russia's war with Ukraine has made many Central Asian countries less trusting of their reliance on the Kremlin and China.
This, paired with America's turn to transactional foreign policy, has made these deals more likely.
So why does it matter? Look, many Americans have found Trump's transactional turn in foreign policy to be morally repugnant, but it has produced some spectacular results when it comes to minerals.
Look, it may seem problematic to hold a realist worldview that allows you to secure minerals from some questionable characters, but it does make sense in our era of great power competition.
Deals with countries like Kazakhstan, while problematic for human rights reasons, make sense politically.
And this isn't the first time the United States has sought out deals with questionable characters on the world stage.
In fact, Donald Trump's second presidency is turning out to be something we've seen before.
In the 1970s, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon approached the Chinese in similar ways, brokering better relations between the two countries behind closed doors.
They helped the United States break up the Sino-Soviet bloc and, in turn, have been credited with helping end the Cold War.
A new mineral deal has come to light in reporting by the New York Times, which has uncovered the Trump administration's push to secure critical minerals and deals with countries outside of China.
This new deal, worth over a billion dollars, is 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.
While the deal ultimately benefits the United States, including members of Trump's family, it would be incorrect to say it also doesn't benefit a country like Kazakhstan.
For Kazakhstan, there are very few options outside of two powers that it is sandwiched between, that is Russia and China.
This has led Kazakhstan to seek a greater independence and security by inviting investment from countries further afield.
They include the United States, European nations like the Netherlands and Switzerland, South Korea, Turkey, and several in the Middle East.
Increasingly, this doesn't mean that Kazakhstan isn't totally shunning Russia or even China.
Kazakhstan is a junior partner to Russia in a NATO-like military alliance and a European Union-like trade bloc.
But that hasn't stopped its leaders from aggressively courting Washington under President Trump, promising a slew of business deals, a series of high-level marketings, and a frenzy of engagement with American companies.
Russia's war with Ukraine has made many Central Asian countries less trusting of their reliance on the Kremlin and China.
This, paired with America's turn to transactional foreign policy, has made these deals more likely.
So why does it matter? Look, many Americans have found Trump's transactional turn in foreign policy to be morally repugnant, but it has produced some spectacular results when it comes to minerals.
Look, it may seem problematic to hold a realist worldview that allows you to secure minerals from some questionable characters, but it does make sense in our era of great power competition.
Deals with countries like Kazakhstan, while problematic for human rights reasons, make sense politically.
And this isn't the first time the United States has sought out deals with questionable characters on the world stage.
In fact, Donald Trump's second presidency is turning out to be something we've seen before.
In the 1970s, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon approached the Chinese in similar ways, brokering better relations between the two countries behind closed doors.
They helped the United States break up the Sino-Soviet bloc and, in turn, have been credited with helping end the Cold War.
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