Newsman: President Donald Trump hosted Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salma’s visit to the White House to celebrate a $1 trillion partnership between two countries. The visit highlighted Saudi Arabia’s commitment to significantly increase its US investments from $600 billion to almost $1 trillion in multiple facets, including artificial intelligence and rare earth materials.
The Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was greeted on the South Lawn by an Army mounted honor guard and black horses bearing American and Saudi flags, with six warplanes conducting a flyover of the White House for a touch of military drama as bin Salman reached Trump’s side.
“Trump doesn’t give a fist bump,” Trump said after shaking the crown prince’s hand in the Oval Office. “I grab that hand. I don’t give a hell where that hand has been, I grab that hand.”
Saudi Arabia pledged to increase its US investments from $600 billion to almost $1 trillion — with investments across the US economy and a focus on sectors including artificial intelligence and rare earth materials.
“Today and tomorrow, we are going to announce that we are going to increase that, that $600 billion to almost $1 trillion of investment, real investment and real opportunity in many areas,” bin Salman said.
Trump celebrated the scale of the commitment, saying, “we’re doing numbers that nobody’s ever done.”
“You know, that’s great. I appreciate that. That’s great,” he said. “…That means investments in plants, in companies, money on Wall Street. And what it really means for everybody, what really counts is jobs. A lot of jobs. We have a lot of jobs.”
Trump further noted that the investment was a reflection of the state of the US economy under his leadership.
“In all fairness, if you didn’t see potential in the US, you wouldn’t be doing it,” he said. “You don’t want to lose money.”
Details on the defense and minerals investment were not yet available, but the prince told the president the US is the “hottest country on the planet” for foreign investment.
“What you’re creating is not about an opportunity today. It’s also about long-term opportunity,” Mohammed said.
The president brushed off a reporter’s question about whether his family’s business dealings with Saudi Arabia constituted a conflict of interest in the Oval Office on Tuesday.
“I have nothing to do with the family business. I have left and I’ve devoted 100% of my energy [to running this country],” Trump said.
“What my family does is fine. They do business all over. They’ve done very little in Saudi Arabia, actually, though I’m sure they can do a lot, and anything they’ve done has been very good.”
On defense, Trump indicated that Saudi Arabia would buy F-35 stealth jets, a move that would mark a major policy shift as critics warned that the deal could lead to the highly advanced aircraft ending up in the wrong hands.
The two leaders also suggested deeper cooperation on regional security, including in Gaza, though precise terms have not been publicly disclosed.
Saudi Arabia was among several countries that played a key role in getting Hamas to agree to President Trump’s historic peace plan there last month.
Trump thanked bin Salman “for the role he played in the transformational peace deal that was achieved last month and so many of the other things that happened to end the war in Gaza.”
“Gaza, while it looks a little bit messy — it has for many, many years, I will tell you, many decades — but it’s getting very close to being perfected, and people are shocked,” Trump said. “And even the great experts that have gone around criticizing badly every country and every president and everything, they’re all saying that what’s taking place in the Middle East is a miracle.”
President trump further announced the US would designate Saudi Arabia as a “major non-NATO ally” at white house dinner in the crown prince’s honor Tuesday night.
“We’re taking our military cooperation to even greater heights by formally designating Saudi Arabia as a major non-NATO ally, which is something that is very important to them,” Trump said, noting that the designation came shortly after he and bin Salman signed “a historic strategic defense agreement.”
The defense agreement will make it “easier for US defense firms to operate in Saudi Arabia, secur[e] new burden-sharing funds from the Saudi Arabia to defray US costs, and affirm[s] that the Kingdom views the United States as its primary strategic partner,” the White House said in a statement Tuesday evening.
Trump said he received a “positive response” about the prospects for Saudi Arabia normalizing ties with Israel. But the crown prince made clear that while he wanted to join the Abraham Accords, he was sticking to his condition that Israel must provide a path to Palestinian statehood, which it has refused to do.
During formal dinner at the White House later on Tuesday, Trump said he was “taking our military cooperation to even greater heights” by designating Saudi Arabia a major non-NATO Ally, a status that provides a U.S. partner with military and economic privileges but does not entail security commitments. U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in June had made Saudi Arabia safer, Trump added.
