On April 30, 2026, Skyline Builders, a Nasdaq-listed U.S. construction company in which Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump hold an indirect stake, agreed to merge with Cove Kaz Capital Group, the unit of New York mining investor Cove Capital that was awarded a tungsten project in Kazakhstan, the Financial Times reported. The merged entity, Kaz Resources, is to operate what Cove Capital calls the largest known undeveloped tungsten resource in the world, and was expected to list on Nasdaq. U.S. Export-Import Bank and U.S. International Development Finance Corporation letters of interest to fund the roughly $1.1 billion project total up to $1.6 billion ($900 million and $700 million).
The timeline, as The New Republic summarized the Financial Times reporting: in August 2025 the brothers bought into Skyline through a special-purpose vehicle arranged by Dominari Securities. In September, Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev told Trump he intended to award the tungsten project to Cove Kaz Capital. According to the New York Times, as reported by Fox News, the deal took shape at a September 2025 meeting in New York where Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick hosted Tokayev and Trump joined by phone. The story became public on October 21. By October 28 the brothers had added almost $24 million to their Skyline investment, and on October 31 Skyline paid $20 million for a 20 percent stake in Kaz Resources. Cove Capital's deal with Kazakhstan's national mining company was announced November 6.
Tungsten is used in missiles and fighter jets, and the Trump administration has made securing a tungsten pipeline a strategic priority while China, Russia and North Korea dominate the resource, Fox News reported. A spokesperson for Don Jr. told the Financial Times: “Don is a passive investor in American Ventures and has no operational involvement in the company. He does not interface with the federal government on behalf of any company he invests in or advises.”
On June 28, 2026, The New York Times reported that the sons of Lutnick also raised capital for one of the project's investors and that the Trump and Lutnick families have ties to at least 14 companies working with the federal government on mining deals, The New Republic reported. The Trump Organization demanded a retraction, calling the story libelous; its lawyer, Alan Garten, wrote that the brothers “had absolutely no involvement in the award of the Kazakhstan project.” A Times spokesperson responded that the Trump Organization “does not deny the main point of our story: That Eric and Donald Jr. have profited from the U.S.-Kazakh tungsten mining agreement,” and that the letter mainly disputed how prominently the story noted that the brothers were “indirect and passive investors.”
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Correction (October 2, 2026): an earlier version of this entry said Cove Kaz Capital had “already secured $1.6 billion” in federal support and called it a U.S. government-backed entity. Cove Kaz is a unit of a private company, and the $1.6 billion reflects letters of interest from EXIM and the DFC, not committed funding. It also described Skyline Builders as the brothers' shell company; Skyline is a publicly traded construction company in which they invested through a special-purpose vehicle. We added the Trump Organization's retraction demand and the Times's response, and removed an unsourced claim tying the pattern to an Air Force drone purchase.