U.S. President Donald Trump kicked off the first foreign trip of his second term on May 13 with a state visit to Saudi Arabia. He and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman signed a strategic economic agreement which included Saudi investments of $600 billion into the United States. Crown Prince Mohammad pledged that a second phase of the deal would be completed in the coming months that could “raise it to $1 trillion.” The agreements included the largest-ever defense agreement between the two countries, totaling $142 billion.
During his remarks in Riyadh on May 13, Trump emphasized the importance of strengthening the U.S.-Saudi relationship, and said he hopes that Saudi Arabia will join the Abraham Accords. “But you’ll do it in your own time,” Trump said, indicating his understanding that Saudi Arabia has insisted it will not diplomatically recognize Israel and join the Abraham Accords until a two-state solution with Palestine is reached.
Trump said that the Middle East is where “[a] new generation of leaders is transcending the ancient conflicts of tired divisions of the past.” The Middle East should be “defined by commerce, not chaos, where it exports technology, not terrorism, and where people of different nations, religions and creeds are building cities together, not bombing each other out of existence,” he said.
