Explainer
What the US and Ukraine Get With Trump’s Minerals Deal
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After months of bad-tempered exchanges and a bust-up on live TV at the White House, the Trump administration finally struck an agreement with Ukraine that grants the US privileged access to the embattled country’s natural resources, including aluminum, graphite, oil and natural gas.
The deal is emblematic of the transactional style of foreign policy espoused by US President Donald Trump, who threatened to cut off military support to Kyiv unless his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy let the US benefit from Ukraine’s untapped mineral wealth and energy reserves.