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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is scheduled to head on a trade-focused tour of Central and South Asia on Saturday, aiming to deepen commercial ties and gain ground on Russia and China, even as Washington juggles several geopolitical crises.
The trip comes while the US remains engaged in its war with Iran and the conflict in Ukraine shows no sign of easing.
Rubio has stepped up his foreign travel in recent weeks, visiting Europe and Latin America amid the US midterm campaign. Much of the sensitive diplomacy on Iran, Ukraine and Gaza has been left to President Donald Trump’s special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
Rubio’s first stop is Uzbekistan, where he will lead a delegation of 200 business leaders. In the historic Silk Road city of Samarkand, he will attend a C5+1 ministerial meeting on Monday with counterparts from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. A senior State Department official said the visit shows Washington’s goodwill toward the “deepening partnership across Central Asia,” particularly in energy. A second senior US official, speaking anonymously, called the trip “an incredible opportunity to bring the United States into a region of the world that is vitally important.”
The region is as large as the European Union but home to only about 80 million people, and it is rich in resources.
Russian influence there has faded since the start of the war in Ukraine, even though the former Soviet republics remain tied to Moscow through pipelines, security arrangements and migration networks.
China has been the main beneficiary and is now the top trade partner of all five countries, with Chinese firms pursuing natural gas in Turkmenistan, uranium in Kazakhstan and rare earths in Tajikistan.
Washington, which has made securing rare earths and improving its energy mix foreign policy priorities, is keen to compete. Trump hosted the five leaders at the White House in November 2025.
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From Uzbekistan, Rubio travels to India, with stops in the industrial and port hubs of Mumbai and Jamnagar in Gujarat. It will be his second official visit to the country this year, following a May trip to New Delhi and Kolkata. Negotiations on a bilateral trade deal have dragged on for months, but the second US official said the two sides are “very close.”
A provisional agreement to lower US tariffs on Indian goods was reached last February, but days later the US Supreme Court struck down many of Trump’s tariffs, clouding the timeline. Relations were also strained when Trump imposed 25 per cent duties on Indian goods over Delhi’s Russian oil purchases, though those have since been lifted.
In Mumbai and Jamnagar, Rubio will promote Washington’s new brand of “commercial diplomacy” with Indian business leaders, and will raise Reliance Industries’ plans to finance a refinery in Texas.
