US and Saudi announce new business deals during investment forum
Saudi Arabian and U.S. officials highlighted billions of dollars in new investments on Wednesday, coinciding the Saudi Arabian Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Washington visit.
According to the program for the event, the CEOs of Chevron and Qualcomm as well as General Dynamics, Cisco, General Dynamics, Pfizer, and Alphabet's Google will attend the U.S. Saudi Investment Forum in Washington. Also attending are senior executives from IBM and Andreessen Horowitz as well as Boeing, Halliburton Adobe, Aramco State Street, and Parsons Corp.
Howard Lutnick, Commerce Secretary, said that the agreements signed yesterday will allow U.S. firms to be leaders in innovation, safety and deployment.
Bin Salman will rub shoulders with some of the most powerful corporate executives in America at an event later on Wednesday. This comes a day after Donald Trump officially reintroduced Bin Salman to Washington, with a glowing White House endorsement.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk will be joined by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang for a panel discussion at the AI Forum. This is bin Salman's first visit to the U.S. after the killing of Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul by Saudi agents, which caused an uproar around the world. U.S. Intelligence concluded that bin Salman had approved the killing or capture of Khashoggi.
The crown prince, who is de facto the ruler of the Kingdom, admitted to being responsible for the operation.
Bin Salman was ready to discuss Trump's favorite subject, the U.S. investment market. Bin Salman, who sat next to Trump at the White House in Washington, promised to raise his country's U.S. investments to $1 trillion. This is an increase from $600 billion he pledged when Trump visited Saudi Arabia back in May. He did not provide any details or a timetable.
Saudi Arabia would find it difficult to invest $1 trillion in the U.S., given the heavy expenditure on a series of ambitious projects at home. These include futuristic megacities which have been over budgeted and delayed and stadiums for 2034 World Cup.
Trump will be attending the Investment Forum event, which will feature a large number of companies. Many of these are expected to announce investment in Saudi Arabia. Closer business ties between the United States and Saudi Arabia could be beneficial to Trump. His confidants and he have made business deals in the real estate sector and other investment areas with Saudi Arabian partners. On Tuesday, Trump tried to disassociate himself from any suggestions of a potential conflict of interest. He told reporters that he had nothing to do the family business, and added that they did very little work with Saudi Arabia.
During Trump's four day Middle East visit in May, the U.S. announced billions in investment in both countries, including deals in AI and defense. (Reporting and writing by David Shepardson, Chris Sanders, Editing by Lincoln Feast & Franklin Paul).
(source: Reuters)
