A shell company backed by Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump has agreed to merge with a critical minerals group that last year secured up to $1.6bn in US government support to mine tungsten in Kazakhstan.
The deal would expand the Trump family’s sprawling business empire, granting the US president’s sons a stake in a company that insiders hope will help sever America’s reliance on China for metals used in munitions and other defence products.
The brothers bought into construction group Skyline Builders in August, taking stakes through a special purpose vehicle run by a subsidiary of Dominari Securities, according to three people familiar with the deal. The size of their investment was not disclosed.
Separately, on September 22, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev told Donald Trump that he planned to award a major tungsten project to US investment group Cove Kaz Capital, according to a person familiar with the discussion. Cove Kaz, backed by the US government, was competing against Chinese and Russian companies.
Details of the informal agreement between Trump and Tokayev surfaced in press reports on October 21.
The two Trump sons added to their Skyline position on October 28, contributing to a private placement that raised almost $24mn, the people said.
On October 31, filings show Skyline agreed to pay $20mn for a 20 per cent stake in a company with “significant critical minerals assets in Asia”.
That company was Kaz Resources, a subsidiary of New York-based mining investment group Cove Capital, which also controls Cove Kaz, according to three people familiar with the matter.
On November 6, Cove Capital and the National Mining Company of Kazakhstan announced a deal to develop “the largest known undeveloped tungsten resource in the world”.
Cove Kaz Capital and Kaz Resources agreed to merge with Skyline on Thursday. The newly formed company plans to trade on Nasdaq as Kaz Resources. There was no mention of either Trump brother in the press release announcing the merger.
There is no suggestion that Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump knew that Cove was on the cusp of securing a contract from their father’s US administration when they made their initial investments in Skyline through Dominari subsidiary American Ventures, or that they influenced the awarding of the contract.
“Don is a passive investor in American Ventures and has no operational involvement in the company,” his spokesperson said. “He does not interface with the federal government on behalf of any company he invests in or advises.”
Eric Trump did not respond to requests for comment sent to the Trump Organization and American Bitcoin, which he co-founded. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The US Export-Import Bank and the Development Finance Corporation, two federally funded agencies, last year committed to provide up to $1.6bn to support the development of the Northern Katpar and Upper Kairakty projects in central Kazakhstan. Cove Kaz now controls 70 per cent of the projects.
Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump joined Dominari’s advisory board in late 2024 and hold an equity stake in its parent company Dominari Holdings. Cove’s chief executive Pini Althaus said he was introduced to Dominari and Skyline in October. Althaus said he had not spoken directly to either Trump brother and did not know the size of their holdings in Skyline.
Althaus told the FT that Cove had received “direct assistance from president Trump, secretary [Marco] Rubio [and] secretary [Howard] Lutnick” to secure the mine in Kazakhstan.
The Trump family last year netted more than $1bn in pre-tax profits from their various cryptocurrency projects and have continued to pile into AI, drones and critical minerals companies that have won lucrative US government contracts.
Democrats have repeatedly flagged potential conflicts of interest relating to the Trump family’s investments.
The Trump administration last year struck a $600mn deal with rare earths manufacturer Vulcan Elements, just months after Donald Jr’s venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, invested in the company.
Althaus also founded USA Rare Earths, a lossmaking mining company that last year secured more than $1.5bn in conditional US government support. He left the company in 2023 but remains a shareholder.
The Trump administration is trying to build new supply chains for critical minerals, including rare earths, to loosen China’s grip on global supply.
The metal is used in drilling tools, armour-piercing bullets and so-called kinetic energy missiles.
“Tungsten is the anointed obscure object of desire in the Pentagon right now, they want it at all prices,” said Christopher Ecclestone, a mining strategist at London-based research group Hallgarten & Company.
Quentin Lamarche, chief executive of the minerals trading company TechMet SCM, said the Kazakh tungsten deposits were “rich in terms of reserves, but they’re very early stage”.
“It’s going to take a lot of time and money” to get the mines up and running, he added.
Additional reporting by Aime Williams in Washington
The headline of this story has been amended to clarify that the US Export-Import Bank and the Development Finance Corporation provided letters of interest, rather than contracts, to support the development of the Northern Katpar and Upper Kairakty projects and that the merger between Cove Kaz Capital, Kaz Resources and Skyline has not been completed.
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