President Donald Trump landed in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday with a singular goal in mind: sign big, beautiful, bountiful deals with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) and entice business heavyweights in the Gulf region to invest billions in the United States. Even his own aides acknowledged that security issues wouldn’t be central to the president’s agenda.
According to the Trump administration, this is precisely what occurred during Trump’s four-day trip to the Middle East. A summary from the White House stated that the Saudis committed $600 billion in investments on everything from purchasing Boeing aircraft to funding AI data centers on U.S. soil. Qatar, meanwhile, agreed to strike economic deals worth more than $243 billion, with future pacts pending.
It turns out that was the boring part of the trip. Numbers can’t compete with photographs and grand pronouncements from the president at the podium—particularly if those moments have the potential to completely overhaul U.S. foreign policy.
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