Trump in the Gulf, commentary on HK's Chief Executive Lee's Gulf trip, PRC delegation to Morocco, more US sanctions on Iranian oil to China

Greetings from Abu Dhabi, where the Trump Gulf visit is winding down. I’ll have a piece to share on the trip, but the main takeaway for me has been the weakness of this idea that Gulf states are sitting on the fence between the US and China. There are gaps between what the White House says and the verifiable numbers - WH says $600 billion worth of deals with Saudi, accounting puts it at $283 billion - but the outcomes from this trip dwarf anything we’ve seen with China.

For comparison’s sake, during Xi’s trip to Riyadh in December 2022 $50 billion in deals were announced and headline writers had a field day with stuff like “US leaves and China fills the vacuum”. And it’s not just the numbers - it’s the type of deals: AI, chips, jets, data centers, weapons. You can go to a US foreign policy newsletter to debate what this means for the US and the personalized and transactional nature of this administration, but for here, the trip tells me that Gulf states are clearly, deeply committed to working with the US on the stuff that matters to them. China will continue to do a lot of important business here, but the US remains the partner of choice.

Trump’s Rush to Cut AI Deals in Saudi Arabia and UAE Opens Rift With China Hawks - Bloomberg.

I realize these are the kinds of concerns that people working in national security have to take seriously, but it does seem illogical that the Saudis and Emiratis would go to all the trouble to develop the AI relationships with US companies, invest hundreds of billions into US AI, get the chips, and then send them to China.