Crossroads Asia | Economy | Central Asia

Rubio Courts Tajikistan as Washington Hunts for Antimony

Restarting the bilateral dialogue after a four-year freeze is a bid to loosen China’s grip on a critically-important mineral.

Secretary Marco Rubio meets with Tajikistan Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin at the Department of State in Washington, D.C., June 30, 2026.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin in Washington on June 30, using the encounter to press for expanded commercial engagement in critical minerals and deeper security and counterterrorism cooperation. Rubio framed the meeting on social media around minerals and terrorism. The same day, the two governments held their Annual Bilateral Consultations — the first under the second Trump administration and, by the State Department’s own account, a restart after a four-year pause.

The Tajik readout was broader, listing trade, investment, energy, transport infrastructure, and the digital economy alongside standard language on extremism and transnational crime. But Washington’s interest seems to be narrower and more concrete: antimony.

The metal hardens ammunition, is used in semiconductors and flame retardants, and has no easy substitute in several defense applications. Tajikistan is the world’s second-largest antimony producer, accounting for roughly a quarter of global output. Its antimony reserves are the third largest in the world, and that’s with only 6 percent of Tajikistan having been geologically surveyed.

In December 2024, China (which dominates the market) banned antimony exports to the United States, which imports 20,000-25,000 tons a year, mostly from Chinese suppliers. Prices roughly doubled. For an administration in Washington that has made mineral supply chains a priority, Dushanbe suddenly matters — and the U.S. is not the only bidder. The European Union already draws more than half its antimony from Tajikistan and is chasing the same supply.  

Although Washington recognized Tajik independence nearly 35 years ago, in the first part of this century the United States (and its NATO allies) treated Central Asia mainly as a logistics platform for the war in Afghanistan, resulting in the Northern Distribution Network, non-lethal security aid, and a French base at Dushanbe’s airport that emptied out by 2014 (the U.S. left its base in neighboring Kyrgyzstan that same year).

The C5 1 platform, launched by then-Secretary of State John Kerry in 2015 under the Obama administration, aimed to engage the region beyond Afghanistan but underwhelmed for a........

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