President Donald Trump departed for his first trip abroad — this time to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates — from a position of strength as he hopes to make $1 trillion in deals and strike a balance between diplomacy and business in the Middle East.
Trump did spend some of last weekend downplaying legal and ethics concerns regarding reports Qatar is considering donating a $400 million Boeing plane, called a “palace in the sky,” to the United States through the Defense Department and then Trump’s presidential library.
But last weekend, Trump also announced a ceasefire between India and Pakistan, a tariff ceasefire between the U.S. and China, and positive steps toward a possible ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. That was in addition to Hamas announcing it was releasing Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old American Israeli soldier captured by the terrorist organization near Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, after 584 days in captivity.
Now Trump is hoping to make more deals in the Middle East, particularly because Saudi Arabia and Israel normalizing relations at the moment is unrealistic during the Israel-Hamas war.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who hosted Trump’s first trip abroad as president in 2017, has already promised to invest $600 billion in the U.S. during Trump’s second administration, a pledge he made during a phone call with Trump in January, Trump’s first call with a foreign leader as president again.
The UAE similarly committed to investing $1.4 trillion in the U.S. during the next decade in March, with Qatar expected to make a $200 billion to $300 billion investment through a deal for commercial planes from Boeing and MQ-9 Reaper drones from General Atomics.
Some of the investments are poised to be in artificial intelligence and technology, with Trump’s trip coinciding with the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum in Riyadh.
“Obviously, [Trump] has a great relationship with the Arab states, both from a diplomatic and business perspective,” Republican strategist John Feehery told the Washington Examiner. “He sees their cooperation, especially with energy production, to be essential to his promise to the American people to bring down gas prices.”
To that end, OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, agreed this month to increase oil production for a second consecutive month, a decision that has decreased the average price of a barrel from $70 to $65.
Republican strategist Cesar Conda, a former chief of staff to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, added that Trump “could not have choreographed a more perfect series of achievements going into his first big trip abroad.”
“President Trump is at the peak of his powers on the world stage,” Conda told the Washington Examiner. “He should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”
But although critics are concerned by what, for instance, Qatar, which has a history of using its money for influence, wants in return for its investments, Trump is not.
“I could be a stupid person to say, ‘Oh no, we don’t want a free plane,’” Trump told reporters Monday morning before departing the White House. “We give free things out. We’ll take one too, and it helps us out.”
Trump’s own trip to the Middle East comes after pilgrimages from his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump to promote Trump Organization investments in the region, including a real estate deal in Qatar to augment other projects in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Oman, as the president and Qatar come under scrutiny for the present of a Boeing 747 plane by the end of the year to replace one of the aircraft used for Air Force One because the original replacements are being delayed to 2027.
A Qatari official told reporters last weekend that plans for a plane for Trump were only under consideration.
Meanwhile, Feehery contended Trump’s business-minded approach to diplomacy is also “smart politically, although the Saudis still need to answer a lot of questions regarding their complicity with 9/11.”
For Democratic strategist Tom Cochran, although the “wind at his back suggests momentum,” “what we’re seeing looks more like course correction.”
“It’s the difference between a ship sailing with favorable winds and one that’s finally stopped taking on water,” Cochran, a former Obama State Department official, told the Washington Examiner. “The latter might be progress, but it’s hardly smooth sailing.”
Although Trump’s trip will underscore his embrace of Arab leaders, it will simultaneously emphasize distance between the president and his Israeli counterpart, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu has tried to use Trump’s presence in the Middle East to put pressure on Hamas to release the 58 hostages who remain in Gaza or risk being “flattened” by Israel Defense Forces before more negotiations regarding the end of the war prompted by the Oct. 7 attacks resume in Doha, Qatar, on Tuesday.
The Trump administration’s side deal with Hamas for Alexander’s release on Monday has put even more pressure on Netanyahu to secure the release of the other hostages. That is on top of Trump last week announcing a ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen during nuclear deal negotiations between Washington and Tehran, without advising Israel, which is not protected by the agreement. Trump’s talks with Iran are currently paused over whether Tehran should be permitted to enrich its own uranium.
The Israel-Hamas negotiations, being facilitated by Qatar and Egypt, are not the only talks taking place this week.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet with him in Istanbul on Thursday after Putin himself proposed a sit-down in response to sanction-enforced pressure from the U.K.– and Europe-led “coalition of the willing” for a 30-day ceasefire.
Trump, who implored Zelensky to accept Putin’s proposal for a meeting, previewed the possibility of him taking part in the sit-down if he would be “helpful” after India undermined the president’s assertion that the U.S. brokered the ceasefire between it and Pakistan under a nuclear threat.
“We helped a lot, and we helped also with trade,” Trump said of India and Pakistan and his diplomacy-business philosophy. “I said, ‘Come on, we’re going to do a lot of trade with you guys. Let’s stop it. Let’s stop it. If you stop it, we’re doing trade. If you don’t stop it, we’re not going to do any trade.’ People have never really used trade the way I used it, that I can tell you.”
Trump’s hope of deals with Arab states comes after last weekend’s negotiations with China in Geneva. Those talks, led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent after last week’s agreement with the United Kingdom, ended with the two sides agreeing to a 90-day pause on the tariffs the two countries have imposed on each other since April. U.S. tariffs on China are now 30%, down from 145%, while the Chinese duty on U.S. goods is 10%, down from 125%. The U.S. 30% tariff appears to be comprised of a baseline 10% levy and supplemented by 20% for China’s perceived inaction regarding fentanyl.
“Yesterday, we achieved a total reset with China,” Trump told reporters Monday morning before flying to the Middle East. “It doesn’t include tariffs on cars, steel, aluminum, things such as that, or tariffs that may be imposed on pharmaceuticals because we want to bring the pharmaceutical businesses back to the United States.”
Trump also said there is potential that he would speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping by the end of the week after confusion regarding when the pair last talked and the S&P 500 improved by 2.9 percentage points in reaction to the development.
“The talks in Geneva were very friendly. The relationship is very good,” he added. “The biggest thing that we’re discussing is the opening of China, and they’ve agreed to do that, but it’s going to take a while to paper it.”
