Trump trip mixes business, diplomacy

Kim Hjelmgaard

and Francesca Chambers

USA TODAY

LONDON − It’s not his first ceremonial sword dance.

President Donald Trump first traveled to the Middle East in 2017. In an ornate, Mar-a-Lago-style ballroom in Saudi Arabia’s capital, he promised 'partnership, based on shared interests and values.' Ahead of a state dinner, he swayed to the ardah, a traditional performance combining dance, poetry and swordplay.

Now Trump is back in the Middle East, blending business and diplomacy from May 13 to 16 with three days of summits among wealthy Persian Gulf rulers. In addition to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, he will visit Abu Dhabi,United Arab Emirates, and Doha, Qatar.

Trump is again diverging from presidential habit by choosing the Middle East, not Canada or Mexico, for the first foreign trip of his second term. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump is returning for 'commerce and cultural exchanges.'

Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar are three of the world’s richest nations and they invest deeply in military and security technologies. Saudi Arabia has already pledged to invest $600billion in American companies. In March, Trump said he wanted the petro-kingdom to commit to $1trillion.

Almost immediately, on May13, Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman signed several new agreements on military cooperation, AI data centers, medical research and deepening security ties worth around $600billion.

They include a nearly $142billion defense sales agreement that provides Riyadh with state-of-the-art equipment and services from U.S. firms, with exports of GE gas turbines and energy solutions totaling $14.2billion and Boeing 737-8 passenger aircraft totaling $4.8billion, the White House said in a fact sheet.

'What Trump really wants to get out of this trip is success,' said Frank Lowenstein, a former Middle East envoy in the Obama administration. 'He wants to make big announcements, especially those that he can say are benefiting the American public, but also to the extent possible that are consistent with his agenda and his narrative, which is, ‘I end foreign wars and I get hostages home.’'

On May12, the day of Trump’s departure, Hamas released U.S.-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander, believed to be the last living American captive in Gaza.

Keeping business and global affairs separate

Some experts say Trump’s visit is in danger of blurring business and politics.

'It’s hard to know what the main mission will be,' said Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. 'Part of the problem is that with Trump the personal and geopolitical are all intertwined. He’s doing business, partly on behalf of the U.S., partly on what looks like his own behalf.'

In fact, all three stops on Trump’s Middle East tour are places where his family have major business interests.

In recent weeks, the president’s sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., who now run the Trump Organization, the holding company for Trump’s personal business ventures and investments, visited the UAE and Qatar to preside over deals involving family real estate and cryptocurrency ventures.

Among the recent projects announced: a luxury hotel in Dubai, a golf course and resort in Qatar and a second high-end residential tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

In recent days the president has defended the idea of possibly accepting a Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar for use as Air Force One.

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington think tank, said he didn’t think it was 'coincidental' Trump chose to visit places where he has business interests.

'These are the three countries you would choose to visit in the region whether your name is Trump or not, whether you have businesses there or not,' said Parsi, who noted Trump recently built a golf course in nearby Oman, a country he is not visiting and that is hosting nuclear talks between the United States and Iran.

Greg Swenson, an investment banker who chairs the United Kingdom chapter of Republicans Overseas, said Trump should avoid blurring personal business and diplomacy.

'The Saudis and Emiratis are our friends. They also have boatloads of money,' he said.

'But you don’t want to bridge that fine line of influence-peddling,' Swenson added, noting that former President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was involved in overseas business deals.

The Trump Organization didn’t return a request for comment.

Peace and politics

Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff told an audience at the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., on May5 that he expected progress in expanding the Abraham Accords. Trump in his first term brokered the series of landmark deals under which Arab states including the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco for the first time recognized Israel. The goal was to provide economic incentives for peace. But the accords barely mentioned Palestinians and their desire for a future state, one of several factors that prevented Saudi Arabia from signing on.

One person hoping to profit − not economically − from Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia is Saad Ibrahim Almadi, a 75-year-old dual U.S.-Saudi citizen. He was arrested in Riyadh in November 2021 when he arrived for a family visit.

Almadi was found guilty of seeking to 'destabilize' the kingdom based on a series of now-deleted social media posts that raised concerns about poverty and the demolition of old parts of the cities of Mecca and Jeddah. The posts also referenced the murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Trump brushed aside the grisly killing of Khashoggi in his first term. Almadi’s son, Ibrahim, is hoping his father, who spent a year in a Saudi jail and has been banned from leaving the country, won’t face a similar fate. He has appealed to Trump via House Speaker Mike Johnson to get his father home.

Contributing: Reuters