Myanmar lobbies the US to invest in its rare earths, a sector China dominates

A newsletter from Washington's lobbyists sets the price of re-engagement

On Monday 9 November 2026, the Washington lobbying firm DCI Group published a newsletter on behalf of Myanmar's information ministry with a blunt message for the United States: treat Myanmar as a critical minerals priority, not simply a diplomatic challenge. The appeal, reported by Reuters on Tuesday, asks Washington to deepen its engagement with Myanmar's military-led government and to move fast on investment in the country's rare earth mines, a sector now dominated by China.

The pitch follows a strategy document the US State Department released last week, outlining a plan to expand American influence and gain access to its deposits. DCI Group, hired by Myanmar last year to help rebuild ties with Washington, put it in the language of American security: “Minerals are the natural place for this deepening relationship to grow, since they connect Myanmar's economic potential to U.S. national security and supply-chain priorities.”

What Washington is actually offering

The strategy document at the centre of the story is the State Department's Integrated Country Strategy for Burma, approved on 31 August and published on the department's website on 16 October. The eleven-page document sets four goals for the American mission: stop scam centres and visa overstays, sell more American goods, broker peace by 2030, and push back against China. Its scorecard is unusually precise: at least three major deals worth more than $5 million each for American companies, a tripling of Myanmar's imports from the United States, three peace forums, and zero visa overstays. It also aims to reach 3 million of Myanmar's most vulnerable people with aid.

The document's most revealing passage ties peace talks directly to minerals. It says the mission will work towards a ceasefire that “presents a pathway to a lasting peace agreement by 2030”, including at least three multistakeholder forums producing agreements on fiscal federalism and territorial demarcation, “which will create opportunities to access Burma's bountiful rare earth resources and combat scam centers.” The document does not say whether Washington intends to lift sanctions or ease the compliance rules that deter investors.

The engagement behind the document has moved quickly. Assistant Secretary of State Michael Vance, the department's top intelligence official, met the military-backed president, Min Aung Hlaing, in Naypyitaw on 15 and 16 September, the highest-level American contact with Myanmar's generals since the 2021 coup, and led further talks in Tokyo in June and again in October. The September meeting was presented as an effort to free the detained American businessman Adam Castillo and discuss scam operations. Some Myanmar-linked individuals have since come off sanctions lists, though Min Aung Hlaing himself remains blacklisted. Washington froze Myanmar's assets at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and imposed sanctions after the coup; the talks mark a reversal of five years of isolation, in a country still torn by the civil war the coup unleashed.

What the announcement leaves unanswered

The newsletter is a pitch, not a deal, and the gaps around it are wide. Nothing in the strategy document says whether the United States will lift sanctions on Min Aung Hlaing, his government or the businesses connected to them, or whether it will address the compliance concerns that have kept American companies out of Myanmar for five years. No American company has been named as an investor, and no mine, licence or concession identified.

Nor is it clear what Naypyitaw can actually deliver. The State Department, China's foreign ministry and Myanmar's military-led government did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment on the lobbying pitch, and the DCI Group newsletter does not explain how American investment would reach deposits held by a rebel army. Whether the generals' offer is a serious opening or a bargaining chip aimed at sanctions relief remains untested.

Why a war-torn country's mines sit at the centre of a superpower contest

Myanmar is one of the world's main sources of heavy rare earths, the dysprosium and terbium that go into the high-performance magnets in electric vehicle motors, wind turbines and precision weapons. Most of its output is shipped to China to be turned into those magnets, and China produces about 90% of the world's rare earth magnets, partly from Myanmar raw material. The International Energy Agency puts Myanmar's share of global mined supply of heavy rare earths at about 45% in 2024, and analysts citing S&P Global data put Myanmar's share of China's rare earth imports at 52.8%.

That dependence is exactly what Washington wants to break. President Donald Trump has made rare earths a national security priority since returning to office, pouring billions of dollars into companies in a bid to loosen China's grip, while Beijing has recently tightened state control of the sector. The contest over who refines the metals, not only who digs them up, is now one of the sharpest edges of the rivalry, and Myanmar's deposits sit on its fault line. The Bureau has tracked how that grip was built in its examination of the metals monopoly.

Why the generals cannot deliver what they are selling

The pitch rests on a contradiction that no newsletter can resolve. Myanmar's military-led government is offering the United States access to deposits it does not control. The main rare earth production sites in northern Kachin State are held by the Kachin Independence Army, a long-standing rebel group fighting the military, with Beijing's backing. The KIA seized Pangwa and Chipwi from a military-aligned militia in October 2024, and the ore that leaves the country travels overland to China, through Chinese buyers, along Chinese routes, to Chinese separation plants.

That geography is the real obstacle. Even if Washington signed a deal in Naypyitaw tomorrow, the trade would still depend on Chinese buyers, routes, chemicals and processing, because Myanmar cannot refine rare earths to the purity advanced manufacturing requires. The generals' pitch also understates how entrenched the existing network is: as DCI Group itself conceded, “China has already spent years building its position in Myanmar's resource sector, and its companies and intermediaries hold advantages that will not be easily displaced.”

The money on the table is modest by the standards of the prize. Three deals worth just over $5 million each is a small opening for a sector that moves tens of thousands of tonnes a year: Myanmar's rare earth exports to China peaked at nearly 42,000 metric tons in 2023, according to figures from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The gap between what the generals want and what Washington has offered measures the distance between a lobbying pitch and a policy. The generals are paying DCI Group $3 million a year, with Trump ally Roger Stone later involved, to close that gap. What they have bought so far is a hearing, not a deal, and the hearing itself is the news: five years after the coup, Washington is talking to the generals about their minerals rather than only about their crimes. The wider pattern of that shift, from isolation to engagement, is visible in the recent rare earth truce and the deals that followed it.

What a minerals deal would set in motion

If Washington moves from talks to contracts, the effects would reach well beyond Kachin State. A first American deal would set a precedent for engaging sanctioned regimes through minerals, and other governments holding critical deposits would take note. Beijing, which has already tightened control of the sector, would have reason to answer with export restrictions or with pressure on its own partners in Myanmar, including the KIA, whose cooperation any American plan would eventually need.

Inside Myanmar, the deal would rearrange the war's economics. A revenue stream tied to Naypyitaw would strengthen the generals' hand against the ethnic armed groups and the parallel government, while a deal that bypassed them would hand the KIA a leverage it has never held. Either way, the scam centres Washington wants dismantled sit under the protection of Naypyitaw-allied militias, and the Financial Action Task Force kept Myanmar on its high-risk list on 30 October, citing those centres.

The calendar now decides whether this is a pitch or a policy

Three things will show whether the lobbying is becoming policy. The first is a name: whether any American company signs one of the three deals the strategy promises. The second is sanctions: whether the administration eases restrictions on Min Aung Hlaing or the businesses around him. The third is Beijing's answer, and the KIA's: no ore moves without one of them. Until one of those moves, the newsletter remains a well-paid pitch for a war-torn country's minerals, priced in the language of American security.