When Changu-Mangu Sell Sand as Magnets to Trump
It takes a special kind of talent to convince the most powerful man in the world that sand can be sold as magnets. But Pakistan, with its eternal duo of Prime Minister and Field Marshal, has once again proven they are the undefeated champions of snake-oil diplomacy. With big smiles and bigger promises, they’ve told Donald Trump that Pakistan’s deserts are overflowing with rare earths, just waiting to be dug up and shipped off to Make America Great Again. In reality, what they’re really shipping is a fantasy—one that Trump seems more than happy to buy.
Let’s start with the basics: rare earths don’t sit in the sand as ready-to-use magnets. They are scattered minerals that require complex and filthy refining processes. But who cares about science when Pakistan’s leaders can pull out a PowerPoint presentation and wave it in front of Trump? If they can convince him that their deserts hold the world’s next iPhone factory, why stop there? Tomorrow they might announce that Karachi’s beaches hide Tesla batteries under the dunes.
And here’s the kicker: if China, the undisputed king of mining and refining, couldn’t extract anything meaningful from Pakistan’s rugged terrain, what hope does Trump have? Beijing, with its armies of engineers and near-total dominance in the global rare earth market, walked away. But Washington, armed with little more than Trump’s ego and Ivanka’s shovel, apparently thinks it will succeed where China failed. Spoiler alert: the only thing that will get mined here is the US Treasury.
Because let’s be clear—Pakistan already has the world’s most lucrative mineral: American dollars. For seventy years, they’ve perfected the technology of digging into Washington’s pockets, refining it into aid packages, and depositing the purest nuggets into Swiss bank accounts. Unlike rare earths, this extraction process is efficient, endless, and comes with zero environmental regulations.
Meanwhile, India sits quietly with vast reserves along its coasts and deserts. Kerala, Karnataka, Odisha, and Andhra Pradesh all have heavy mineral sands rich in rare earths. Rajasthan and Gujarat have potential too. But here’s the inconvenient truth: reserves don’t mean much if you don’t have the technology to process them. Except for China, no country on this planet has perfected the refining of rare earths. That’s why, despite holding deposits across the globe, the entire world depends on Beijing’s processing power. India has the reserves, struggles with the refining. Pakistan? It doesn’t even have the reserves—just the audacity to pretend it does.
And yet, back in Islamabad, the “awaam” is celebrating. The TV anchors are running ticker after ticker about how Trump gave their leaders “unprecedented respect.” Nobody cares if the respect came packaged with a scam. For Pakistan, optics matter more than outcomes. A photo-op is treated like a Nobel Prize, and a handshake in Washington is considered equal to an IMF bailout.
The truth is simple: there are no rare earth magnets hiding in Pakistan’s deserts. What exists is something far rarer—its unmatched ability to make US presidents look like ATM machines. Trump may think he’s investing in a resource revolution, but what he’s really doing is funding the oldest, most reliable Pakistani industry: selling fantasies to America and pocketing the cash.
