Team Paraguay’s amazing FIFA World Cup run put the South American country on the radar for most Americans. But, for U.S. policymakers, Paraguay should be about far more than soccer. Paraguay is one of the most ethnically and religiously homogenous on the continent. This imbues it with tremendous stability and social cohesion. That it is reliably pro-American, open for business, and centrally located is a virtue that wins it increasing attention within the State Department and Pentagon.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio certainly understands this. In February 2024, he became the first U.S. senator to visit Paraguay in 40 years. Just six months ago, Rubio hosted a ceremony at the State Department to celebrate the new Status of Forces Agreement under which U.S. troops might operate inside the country while on joint operations and exercises. Transforming that into a more permanent agreement is simply a matter of President Donald Trump and Rubio signaling their desire.
To Trump and Rubio’s credit, they are willing to break with decades of diplomatic inertia to reconsider American priorities. This is one of the reasons why the Trump administration has moved to embrace the Democratic Republic of Congo. Economists and geologists estimate that more than $24 trillion in strategic minerals, metals, and rare earths lie buried inside Africa’s second-largest country. While previous administrations have largely deferred the DRC’s resources to China, Trump has sought to deal with President Felix Tshisekedi to win a share of the DRC’s rare earths for American industry.
The problem is the DRC itself. Just as two decades ago, pundits spoke of Afghanistan’s economic potential because of the potentially multitrillion-dollar windfall buried underneath its mountains, the DRC’s mineral wealth means nothing if companies are unable to extract it because of instability. Tshisekedi does not help. To deflect attention from his own inabilities, he has fanned ethnic tensions not only in eastern DRC but in Western DRC as well. While the Trump administration condemns the M23 insurgency or alleges Rwandan roots, the reality is that it began as a good governance movement seeking implementation of promised reforms. A 2024 embed with the group showed that it provided better security and communal peace than Tshisekedi’s regime. Corruption hampers the success of any DRC contracts. The DRC remains among the world’s most corrupt countries, with no improvement since Tshisekedi came to power.
Paraguay is an emerging economy that has struggled in the same surveys, but it outperforms the DRC and is immune to the insurgencies and government instability that the DRC faces. At the same time, it has the basic infrastructure — roads and airports — that the DRC lacks. Most importantly, it can be a hub, if not the source, of strategic minerals and metals. Paraguay is nearly as close to Chile’s lithium-rich Antofagasta region as the Chilean capital Santiago. It likely has its own lithium in saline groundwater trapped beneath its Chaco region.
Paraguay is also reputed to have vast titanium deposits, perhaps the largest in the world. Not only is the titanium high-grade, but it sits close to the surface, minimizing mining costs. Prospecting continues at Alto Paraná Titanium Project, and while reality does not always match initial optimism, U.S. firms could easily be at the forefront of Paraguayan titanium investment with Washington working with Asunción to shape a symbiotic legal and investment regime. In addition, Paraguay holds certified uranium reserves, as well as rare earths such as niobium and neodymium, used respectively in jet engines and electric vehicles.
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Trump should continue to reach out to Africa, but U.S. businesses should have no illusions about the DRC. Fortunately, the United States could gain the same benefits within its own hemisphere. Paraguay remains open for business. While then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Paraguay in 2019, the first such visit in more than half a half-century, no sitting U.S. president has ever visited Paraguay since the country won independence in 1842.
For the sake of America’s strategic future and the “Donroe Doctrine,” it is time to change that.
Michael Rubin is director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum and a distinguished fellow at India’s Usanas Foundation.