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Trump to Visit Saudi Arabia as Major Announcements Expected

Trump and the Saudi Crown Prince attend a business lunch in Washington in 2018 (AFP)
Trump and the Saudi Crown Prince attend a business lunch in Washington in 2018 (AFP)
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Trump to Visit Saudi Arabia as Major Announcements Expected

Trump and the Saudi Crown Prince attend a business lunch in Washington in 2018 (AFP)
Trump and the Saudi Crown Prince attend a business lunch in Washington in 2018 (AFP)

US President Donald Trump is scheduled to arrive in Riyadh next Tuesday on his first official foreign trip since beginning his second term in office. The visit comes on the heels of an unplanned stop in Rome, where he attended the funeral of Pope Francis.

Saudi Arabia is once again Trump’s first international destination - mirroring his 2017 visit, which he described at the time as “highly successful.” This year, his Gulf tour will also include stops in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, running from May 13 to 16.

Since Trump’s first visit eight years ago - just a year after the launch of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 - the Kingdom has made significant strides toward economic transformation. The upcoming trip is expected to offer a real-time snapshot of that progress and serve as a tangible endorsement of the reforms set in motion by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Trump is expected to witness a vastly changed Saudi Arabia, with developments that reflect the ambitions of its long-term strategic agenda.

High-Level Deals

In the days leading up to Trump’s visit, expectations are mounting over a series of high-profile announcements. Speaking after his meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Wednesday, Trump hinted at “major developments” to be revealed during his Gulf tour.

Among the expected announcements is a preliminary agreement on civil nuclear cooperation, which US Energy Secretary Chris Wright discussed during his visit to Saudi Arabia last month. Wright said both sides were close to finalizing an agreement focused on civil nuclear energy and technological collaboration.

Deepening Strategic and Economic Ties

Trump’s return to Riyadh underscores the Kingdom’s importance in US foreign policy and economic strategy. The visit also aligns with the administration’s push to encourage foreign investment in the United States while expanding bilateral cooperation with key regional allies.

The trip is expected to attract a wave of influential American business leaders to the Saudi capital. Executives from Wall Street and Silicon Valley, including BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and Palantir CEO Alex Karp, will attend the Saudi-US Investment Forum, scheduled to coincide with Trump’s arrival.

Senior figures from CitiGroup, IBM, Qualcomm, Alphabet, and Franklin Templeton are also expected to participate. David Sacks, the White House’s top advisor on artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, will also be present at the talks.

Coinciding with the upcoming summit, the Trump administration announced plans to roll back the “AI Export Restriction Rule” imposed under former President Joe Biden. The rule had placed strict controls on the export of advanced AI chips, even to allied nations.

A Longstanding Economic Partnership

Economic ties between the United States and Saudi Arabia remain robust, diversified, and steadily growing. In 2024, bilateral trade reached $32.3 billion, up from $22.9 billion in 2020. According to the Federation of Saudi Chambers, the US ranks as the Kingdom’s second-largest supplier and sixth-largest export destination.

Data from the US Census Bureau show that total US-Saudi goods trade in 2024 stood at $25.9 billion, with American exports valued at $13.2 billion and imports from the Kingdom at $12.7 billion. This left the US with a trade surplus of $443.3 million.

Saudi Arabia’s exports to the US include crude oil, fertilizers, organic chemicals, and metal products. Meanwhile, American exports to the Kingdom span pharmaceuticals, chemicals, grains, plastics, and high-tech equipment, including aerospace and medical devices.

According to a 2023 McKinsey report, transportation equipment led Saudi imports from the US at $5.9 billion, followed by medical instruments at $1.4 billion and pharmaceuticals at $1.3 billion. On the other side, energy products topped Saudi exports to the US at $14 billion, followed by chemicals and metals.

Bilateral Investment on the Rise

The investment relationship between the two nations is equally strong. As of the end of 2023, US foreign direct investment in Saudi Arabia totaled $57.7 billion, accounting for 23% of the Kingdom’s total FDI, according to the Saudi Ministry of Investment. These investments span critical sectors such as energy, infrastructure, real estate, and technology.

Saudi Arabia also holds substantial assets in the US, including approximately $127 billion in Treasury bonds as of February 2025. The Public Investment Fund (PIF) continues to pursue major stakes in key US companies, including Lucid Motors, Uber, Arm, PayPal, and Amazon. The PIF has also expanded into the gaming and tech sectors through investments in Scopely, Magic Leap, and Savvy Games Group.

Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan has previously stated that the Kingdom’s total investments in the US exceed $770 billion.

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Business

Iran Inflation Rate Rises to 50.6 Percent

A shopkeeper arranges items at his shop around the traditional grand bazaar of Tehran, Iran, Sunday, March 29, 2026. (AP)
A shopkeeper arranges items at his shop around the traditional grand bazaar of Tehran, Iran, Sunday, March 29, 2026. (AP)
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Iran Inflation Rate Rises to 50.6 Percent

A shopkeeper arranges items at his shop around the traditional grand bazaar of Tehran, Iran, Sunday, March 29, 2026. (AP)
A shopkeeper arranges items at his shop around the traditional grand bazaar of Tehran, Iran, Sunday, March 29, 2026. (AP)

Iran's annual inflation rate rose to 50.6 percent by mid-March, up three percentage points from the previous month, the country's official statistics center said on Sunday.

"The inflation rate for the twelve months ending in Esfand (from February 20 to March 20) reached 50.6 percent," the center said in a statement carried by the official IRNA news agency.

The rate had stood at 47.5 percent in the previous month, covering the period from January 21 to February 19.

The rise in prices comes with Iran at war with the United States and Israel since February 28, when strikes that killed the country's supreme leader triggered a conflict that has since spread across the Middle East.

On March 20, Iran marked the start of the Nowruz holidays, the Persian New Year.

Business

Worries About Global Economic Pain Deepen as the War in Iran Drags on

A worker refills the tank of a car at a gasoline station in Macau on March 27, 2026. (AFP)
A worker refills the tank of a car at a gasoline station in Macau on March 27, 2026. (AFP)
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Worries About Global Economic Pain Deepen as the War in Iran Drags on

A worker refills the tank of a car at a gasoline station in Macau on March 27, 2026. (AFP)
A worker refills the tank of a car at a gasoline station in Macau on March 27, 2026. (AFP)

US and Israeli attacks on Iran have driven up prices, darkened the outlook for the world economy, sent global stock markets reeling and forced developing countries to ration fuel and subsidize energy costs to protect their poorest.

Ongoing strikes and counterstrikes on Persian Gulf refineries, pipelines, gas fields and tanker terminals threaten to the prolong the global economic pain for months, even years.

“A week ago or certainly two weeks ago, I would have said: If the war stopped that day, the long-term implications would be pretty small,” said Christopher Knittel, an energy economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “But what we’re seeing is infrastructure actually being destroyed, which means the ramifications of this war are going to be long-lived.”

Iran has hit Qatar’s Ras Laffan natural gas terminal, which produces 20% of the world’s liquefied natural gas. The March 18 strike wiped out 17% of Qatar’s LNG export capacity and repairs will take up to five years, state-owned QatarEnergy said.

The war caused an oil shock from the get-go. Iran responded to US and Israeli attacks Feb. 28 by effectively closing off the Strait of Hormuz, a transit point for a fifth of the world’s oil, by threatening tankers trying to pass through.

Gulf oil exporters like Kuwait and Iraq cut production because there was nowhere for their oil to go without access to the strait. The loss of 20 million barrels of oil a day delivered what the International Energy Agency calls the “largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.”

The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil climbed 3.4% on Friday to settle at $105.32. That was up from roughly $70 just before the war began. Benchmark US crude rose 5.5% to settle at $99.64 per barrel.

“Historically, oil price shocks like this have led to global recessions,” Knittel said.

The war also has dredged up a bad economic memory from the oil shocks of the 1970s: stagflation.

“You’re raising the risk of higher inflation and lower growth,” said the Harvard Kennedy School's Carmen Reinhart, a former World Bank chief economist.

Gita Gopinath, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, recently wrote that global economic growth, expected before the war to register 3.3% this year, would be 0.3 to 0.4 percentage points lower if oil prices averaged $85 a barrel in 2026.

Fertilizer shortages and price hikes hurt farmers

The Gulf accounts for a big share of exports of two key fertilizers, a third of urea and a quarter of ammonia. Producers in the region enjoy an advantage: easy access to low-cost natural gas, the primary feedstock for nitrogen fertilizers.

Up to 40% of world exports of nitrogen fertilizer pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

Now that the passage is blocked, urea prices are up 50% since the war and ammonia 20%. Big agricultural producer Brazil is especially vulnerable because it gets 85% of its fertilizer from imports, Alpine Macro commodity strategist Kelly Xu wrote in a commentary. Egypt, a big fertilizer producer itself, needs natural gas to make the stuff and production falters when it can’t get enough.

Eventually, higher fertilizer prices are likely to make food more expensive and less abundant as farmers skimp on it and get lower yields. The squeeze on food supplies will land hardest on families in poorer countries.

The war also has disrupted world supplies of helium, a byproduct of natural gas and a key input in chipmaking, rockets and medical imaging. Qatar makes helium at the Ros Laffan facility and supplies a third of the world’s helium.

Rationing gas and limiting the air conditioning

“No country will be immune to the effects of this crisis if it continues to go in this direction,” International Energy Agency head Fatih Birol said on March 23.

Poorer countries will be hit hardest and face the biggest energy shortages “because they will be outbid when competing for the remaining oil and natural gas,” said Lutz Kilian, director of the Center for Energy and the Economy at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Asia is especially exposed: More than 80% of the oil and LNG that passes through the Strait of Hormuz is headed there.

In the Philippines, government offices are now open just four days a week and bureaucrats must limit the use of air conditioning to nothing cooler than 75°F (24°C). In Thailand, public workers have been told to take the stairs instead of elevators.

India is the world’s second-biggest importer of liquefied petroleum gas, which is used in cooking. The Indian government is giving households priority over businesses as it allocates its limited supply and absorbing most of the price increases to keep costs low for poor families.

But LPG shortages have forced some eateries to shorten hours, close temporarily or drop dishes like curries and deep-fried snacks requiring a lot of energy.

South Korea, dependent on energy imports, is restricting the use of cars by public employees and has reinstated fuel price caps that had been dropped in the 1990s.

Crisis hits a vulnerable US economy

The United States, the world’s largest economy, is somewhat insulated.

America is an oil exporter, so its energy companies stand to benefit from higher prices. And LNG prices are lower in the US than elsewhere because its export liquefaction facilities already are running at 100% capacity. The US can’t export any more LNG than it already is, so gas stays home, keeping domestic supplies abundant and prices stable.

Still, higher gasoline prices are weighing on American consumers already frustrated by the high cost of living. According to AAA, the average price of a gallon of gasoline has risen to nearly $4 a gallon from $2.98 a month ago.

“Nothing weighs more heavily on consumers’ collective psyche than having to pay more at the pump,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, and his colleagues wrote in a commentary.

The US economy already was showing signs of weakness, expanding an annual pace of just 0.7% from October through December, down from a rollicking 4.4% from July through September. Employers unexpectedly cut 92,000 jobs in February and added just 9,700 a month in 2025, the weakest hiring outside a recession since 2002.

Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon, has raised the odds of a US recession over the next year to 40%. The risk when times are "normal'' is just 15%.

Recovery will take time

The world economy has proven resilient in the face of repeated shocks: a pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, resurgent inflation and the high interest rates needed to bring it under control.

So there was optimism it also could shrug off the damage from the Iran war. But those hopes are fading as the threats to the Gulf's energy infrastructure continue.

“There is no economic upside to the conflict with Iran,” Zandi and his colleagues wrote. "At this point, the questions are how much longer the hostilities will continue and how much economic damage they will cause.”

Business

Two India-bound LPG Tankers Crossing Strait of Hormuz Out of Gulf

An oil tanker crossing the Strait of Hormuz (Reuters)
An oil tanker crossing the Strait of Hormuz (Reuters)
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Two India-bound LPG Tankers Crossing Strait of Hormuz Out of Gulf

An oil tanker crossing the Strait of Hormuz (Reuters)
An oil tanker crossing the Strait of Hormuz (Reuters)

Two liquefied petroleum gas tankers, BW Elm and BW Tyr, are crossing the Strait of Hormuz bound for India, according to ship tracking data from LSEG and Kpler.

The US-Israeli war against Iran has all but halted shipping through the strait, but Iran said this week that "non-hostile vessels" may transit the waterway if they coordinate with Iranian authorities.

The two India-flagged vessels have ⁠crossed the Gulf ⁠area and are in the eastern Strait of Hormuz, the data showed, according to Reuters.

India is gradually moving its stranded LPG cargoes out from the strait, with four LPG tankers moved so far - Shivalik, Nanda Devi, ⁠Pine Gas, and Jag Vasant.

As of Friday, 20 Indian-flagged ships including five LPG carriers were stranded in the Gulf, Rajesh Kumar Sinha, special secretary in the federal shipping ministry, said.

LPG carriers Jag Vikram, Green Asha and Green Sanvi are still in the western Strait of Hormuz, LSEG data show.

India, the world's second-largest LPG importer, is ⁠battling its ⁠worst gas crisis in decades, with the government cutting supplies for industries to shield households from any shortage of cooking gas.

The country consumed 33.15 million metric tons of LPG, or cooking gas, last year, with imports accounting for about 60% of demand. About 90% of those imports came from the Middle East.

India is also loading LPG onto its empty vessels stranded in the Gulf.