Rubio’s Asia Tour Puts Energy Deals, Minerals and Trade in Focus

It’s dealmaking time: despite the roiling geopolitical tensions embroiling Washington on several fronts, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Central Asia’s Uzbekistan Sunday to boost commercial ties and gain an edge over Russia and China.

With the United States mired in its war with Iran, and the conflict in Ukraine showing no signs of abating, Rubio has stepped up his foreign travel with recent trips to Europe and Latin America, smack in the middle of the US midterm election campaign. He has largely ceded control of the contentious Iran, Ukraine and Gaza situations to US President Donald Trump’s special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

Rubio was instead leading a massive delegation of 200 business leaders to Uzbekistan, where he will take part on Monday in a ministerial meeting of five Central Asian countries.

Rubio landed in Uzbekistan’s Samarkand, on the historic Silk Road Sunday, according to an AFP journalist. “This is an important relationship,” he said shortly before his departure, calling the trip a strategic visit. “There’s countries you’d like to get to because we want to build our relationships with them.” A senior State Department official told reporters on Friday that Rubio was demonstrating Washington’s goodwill toward the “deepening partnership across Central Asia,” especially in the energy sector.Central Asia is a resource-rich region as vast as the European Union but only boasts a population of about 80 million people. “We’ve been planning this for several months, and it’s an incredible opportunity to bring the United States into a region of the world that is vitally important,” said a second senior US official, on condition of anonymity.

In Samarkand, Rubio will participate in a C5+1 meeting with ministers from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. In November 2025, Trump welcomed the leaders of those countries to the White House.

The former Soviet republics remain linked to Moscow by energy pipelines, as well as security and migratory networks, but Russian influence has eroded since the start of the war in Ukraine with China reaping the benefits. Beijing is now the main trade partner of all five Central Asian nations.

Chinese companies have signed a number of energy-related deals, seeking to buy natural gas in Turkmenistan, uranium in Kazakhstan and rare earths in Tajikistan.

The United States also has made sourcing rare earths and improving its energy mix key parts of its foreign policy. The US ambassador to India, Sergio Gor who also serves as the special envoy for Central and South Asia—has repeatedly emphasized the need for Washington to have better ties across the region.

After his visit to Uzbekistan, Rubio will head to India, with stops in Mumbai and Jamnagar in Gujarat state. Both are industrial hubs and major international port cities. It will be the secretary of state’s second official visit to India this year, after a May trip to New Delhi and Kolkata, signifying Washington’s push in the region.

“We’re very close” to a trade deal with India, the second senior US official said of negotiations that have dragged on for months. Last February, the two sides reached a provisional agreement aimed at reducing US tariffs on Indian products.

But just a few days later, the US Supreme Court struck down many of Trump’s tariffs, which fueled uncertainty about when a bilateral trade deal could take effect.

Ever since, Washington and Delhi have been locked in negotiations. Relations were rattled when Trump imposed 25 percent tariffs on Indian goods in retaliation for Delhi’s purchases of Russian oil, but those duties have since been lifted. In Mumbai and Jamnagar, Rubio will offer the new US brand of so-called “commercial diplomacy” in his meetings with Indian business leaders.

He will notably raise plans by the Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries to finance a refinery in Texas. Reliance is led by billionaire Indian tycoon Anant Ambani.

Meanwhile, Marco Rubio said Saturday that President Donald Trump’s waiver of sweeping sanctions and tariffs on Russia would be a 60-day pause to “analyze” their impact on the global economy. “The president wants to take the 60-day period of time to sort of analyze what imposing both sanctions and tariffs will mean to the global economy and even to the US economy,” Rubio said, noting that the economic restrictions involved a number of countries, not just Russia. He said various conflicts were impacting global energy prices, including the US war on Iran and attacks on Saudi Arabia by Yemen’s Houthis. “These conflicts around the world are starting to crash into each other, and they’re having an impact not just on global oil and diesel prices” but on economies as well, Rubio said.

Trump said late Saturday his decision would benefit the US, though it was unclear if he had actually made up his mind on the matter.

“We’ll figure it out, and you’ll figure it out,” he said. “It’s a very good decision, and it’s going to be a decision that’s good for the country, and I think good for the world.” US lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle have sharply criticized Trump after he signed an executive order Friday that waived sweeping sanctions and tariffs targeting Russia -- measures adopted by Congress last month.