Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Army Chief Asim Munir presented US President Donald Trump with a wooden box containing rare earth minerals during a White House meeting on Thursday. The hour-and-a-half-long meeting, also attended by Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, underscores Islamabad’s push to leverage its mineral wealth to attract American investment and strengthen ties with Washington.
Sharif praised Trump’s global peace efforts and thanked him for the July trade agreement, which includes a 19% tariff on Pakistani imports and provisions for US assistance in developing Pakistan’s oil reserves. He invited American companies to invest in Pakistan’s agriculture, IT, mining, minerals, and energy sectors, emphasizing that foreign investment could help Pakistan overcome its long-standing financial crisis.
The rare earth minerals presentation follows a USD 500 million Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between Pakistan’s Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) and Missouri-based US Strategic Metals to set up a poly-metallic refinery in Pakistan. The project will focus on exporting minerals such as antimony, copper, gold, tungsten, and rare earth elements. A second agreement was signed between Pakistan’s National Logistics Corp and Portugal’s Mota-Engil Group, covering engineering and construction projects.
However, the event comes after Trump’s controversial claim of a “massive” oil deal with Pakistan, which experts have dismissed, citing decades of exploration by over 30 international firms- including ExxonMobil and Shell, that yielded minimal results. A 2015 US energy survey suggesting potential reserves has also been challenged. Analysts note that Pakistan’s rare earth display may be a strategic effort to divert attention from unverified oil claims and to bolster credibility with U.S. investors.
Pakistan has a history of making unverified claims about natural resource discoveries. In 2019, then-Prime Minister Imran Khan announced a “possible massive offshore oil find,” which was later dismissed by the Petroleum Division after drilling failed to yield significant results.
Most of Pakistan’s mineral wealth is concentrated in insurgency-hit Balochistan, where separatist opposition complicates extraction efforts. Analysts say Islamabad’s display of rare earth minerals is also aimed at positioning itself as a supplier of strategic resources at a time when the US seeks to reduce China’s dominance in global critical minerals.
A photo released by the White House showed Munir pointing to the open wooden box while Trump looked on, with Sharif standing nearby smiling. The US embassy in Pakistan welcomed the agreements, calling them “a positive development for both nations.”
