Trump brags about Saudi Arabia investment at Davos

President Donald Trump used a virtual address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to tout a recent investment of $600 billion over the next four years from Saudi Arabia.
His remarks come one day after Trump held his first international call as president with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, where the two leaders discussed efforts to bring stability to the Middle East, bolster regional security, and combat terrorism, according to a White House readout of the call.
“It’s also reported today in the papers that Saudi Arabia will be investing at least $600 billion in America,” Trump said on Thursday during a virtual appearance at the elite gathering of world leaders. “But I’ll be asking the Crown Prince, who’s a fantastic guy, to round it out to around $1 trillion. I think they’ll do that because we’ve been very good to them.”
The president then added he would ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to “bring down the cost of oil.”
The newly-inaugurated Trump said he had a “mandate” from the American public to enact his vision, chief among them bringing down high grocery and gas costs and ending global crises.
“If the price came down, the Russia–Ukraine war would end immediately,” Trump said. “Right now, the price is high enough that that war will continue. You got to bring down the oil price.”
Trump’s boast of his relationship with Saudi Arabia prompted Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman to later quip, “I’m sure the crown prince of Saudi Arabia will be very glad you gave this speech today.”
Unlike his predecessor President Joe Biden, whose first call as president in 2021 was to northern neighbor Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump is using his second term to build on his efforts in the Middle East from his first term as president.
In May 2017, Trump visited Saudi Arabia on his first foreign trip, where Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud greeted Trump and first lady Melania Trump, in an attempt to repair relations between the two nations. Trump also views the Abraham Accords, a landmark agreement between Israel, United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain normalizing diplomatic relations, as one of his biggest accomplishments during his first term.
One of Trump’s first phone calls after being sworn into office in January 2017 was to his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
Similarly, former President Barack Obama‘s first calls as president in 2009 were to Middle Eastern leaders, including then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Jordan’s King Abdullah, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
The Saudi Crown Prince has faced criticisms over the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. U.S. intelligence reports implicated the prince’s approval, which led to the killing of Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident.
Trump’s son-in-law and former adviser, Jared Kushner, was forced to defend his business dealings with the crown prince after leaving the White House.
There is also some evidence that Saudi Arabia may have helped the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist hijackers.
However, as Trump seeks to make his mark on the domestic and global front, he appears willing to work with the crown prince as long as it will benefit the nation and help end foreign conflicts.
At Davos, Trump also chastised NATO and the European Union and pressured businesses to invest in the U.S. or risk tariffs being imposed upon them.
“From the standpoint of America, the EU treats us very, very unfairly, very badly,” Trump said, lamenting the EU’s tariffs. “They have a large tax that we know about and a bad tax, and it’s a very substantial one … essentially, [they] don’t take our farm products, and they don’t take our cars. Yet, they send cars to us by the millions. They put tariffs on things that we want to do.”
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“I’m also going to ask all NATO nations to increase defense spending to 5% of GDP, which is what it should have been years ago,” Trump said about the global alliance. “It was only at 2%, and most nations didn’t pay until I came along.”
“If you don’t make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then very simply, you will have to pay a tariff, differing amounts, but a tariff which will direct hundreds of billions of dollars, and even trillions of dollars into our treasury to strengthen our economy and pay down debt,” Trump also warned.