US President Donald Trump will land in the Gulf tomorrow in a bid to drum up investment and expand trade with our part of the world. Agreements in investment, oil, defense, AI infrastructure, and nuclear power, are all in the cards when Trump starts his tour in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday before heading on to the UAE and Qatar.

The swing through the region is set to see “a huge number of investment and trade [agreements] happening,” Arab News’ Faisal Abbas told CNBC, stressing that injections of capital should be a two-way street. A potential lifting of the 10% tariff on aluminum and steel could also be on the agenda, CNBC reported elsewhere. Gulf officials are actively looking to tie fresh investment and big purchases of US goods to preferential tariff treatment for exports from our region.

Sound familiar? The visit is basically a re-run of Trump’s first official international trip as president in 2017 Expect to hear talk of a USD 1 tn visit. White House officials appear to have quietly seeded to US media the idea that Trump will extract trade and investment pledges worth a combined USD 1 tn.

Expect tech and AI to be in sharp relief this week, with Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman among those expected to attend an investment summit in Riyadh on Tuesday, the New York Post reports. Representatives from BlackRock, Alphabet, and IBM will also be there.

Gulf leaders want to see regulatory approval for investments in the US put on the fast track. The US is reportedly planning to develop a fast-track process for screening FDI, with the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar in discussions to be included in the initiative.

ICYMI- Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have pledged to invest heavily in the US to the tune of USD 600 bn for Saudi, and USD 1.4 tn for the UAE. The plan for the visit is to seal those investment agreements, with Trump saying a “tremendous amount of jobs will be created in those two or three days,” according to Reuters.

The itinerary:

  • Trump is expected in Riyadh tomorrow (Tuesday, 13 May), where he’ll meet with Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohamed bin Salman;
  • The Riyadh investment summit will take place on Tuesday, before Trump heads to Qatar;
  • On Wednesday, he lands in the UAE to wrap up the trip. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will then fly on to Turkey for a NATO meeting.

REMEMBER- The Trump administration is reportedly planning to ease the Biden administration’s restrictions on exports of advanced AI chips, introduced in January and set to take effect on May 15. The tiered system — which divided countries into three tiers that were allowed to receive unlimited, capped, or no exports — will reportedly be cancelled, and likely replaced with new, “simpler” rules aiming at handing the US more control over chips abroad.

IN CONTEXT: Did Washington just reach a trade agreement with China? Senior White House officials released a statement shared on X overnight headlined “US announces China trade deal in Geneva,” but stopped short of offering details, saying they would be released later today. The swing through the Gulf has largely been positioned in Washington as part of the White House’s drive to diversify trade ties away from China as Trump’s trade war brews.

Don’t expect Saudi to recognize Israel on Trump’s swing through the region. The US administration hopes to negotiate an expansion of the so-called Abraham Accords that Trump brokered in his first term, but pundits see no chance of that happening unless Israel winds down its war on Gaza. Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN, and Reuters have more. Riyadh has previously tied the issue to Tel Aviv giving Palestine a clear path to statehood.

Is Trump going to meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas? That’s the contention in at least one Israeli media outlet, which cites an unnamed Israeli source as saying bin Salman is brokering a sit-down between Trump and Abbas. The same report contends Trump could meet with Syrian leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa and Lebanon’s Joseph Aoun. Sources in the Palestinian Authority — cited by Haaretz — denied the report, saying that Abbas is in Russia and there are no plans he will head to Riyadh.

Riyadh is keen to make progress on a long-in-the-works defense and security cooperation pact that it has been working on since the Biden administration. The previous administration directly linked the pact to Riyadh’s recognition of Israel, wanted Saudi to be clear that it would limit the use of Chinese AI technology, and was seeking a promise that KSA would continue to demand USD payment for oil and not start accepting China’s RMB. Riyadh, in turn, wants US help building out a domestic nuclear power industry seen as critical to its energy diversification drive.

The UAE and the US have become closer allies over the past few years. The UAE is investing big in US tech and energy over the next decade following UAE National Security Advisor Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s visit to the US earlier this year. State AI investor MGX has already invested USD 2 bn into Binance using a Trump-linked stablecoin, and joining the AI Infrastructure Partnership, a platform it co-founded alongside Blackrock and Microsoft, which now also includes Nvidia and Elon Musk’s xAI. Meanwhile, Adnoc’s new investment arm XRG is pledging bns of investments in the US’ energy sector, including through USD 9 bn worth of acquisitions of natural gas assets.

It’s a two-way street: On the flip side, Microsoft is investing USD 1.5 bn in G42, while US private equity giants are linking up with sovereign wealth funds here at home for co-investment in private credit, with Mubadala for one investing over USD 5 bn in partnerships with Apollo, Ares, Goldman Sachs, and Blackstone.

What’s a Trump visit without a little bit of controversy? Western media is making plenty of hay about:

  • Trump’s plan to name the Gulf of Arabia the … Gulf of Arabia on US maps, where it’s presently referred to as the “Persian Gulf.” (Hardly a controversial notion in our part of the world).
  • Qatar is gifting The Donald a Boeing 747 that’s worth about USD 400 mn new. Trump will have the jet retrofitted to be used as Air Force One — and plans to take it into retirement with him for his personal use.
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