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UAE, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain Sign $2 Bn Industrial Agreements

Jordan's Prime Minister Bishr al-Khasawneh, surrounded by ministers of Egypt, UAE, Jordan, and Bahrain at the signing ceremony in Amman (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Jordan's Prime Minister Bishr al-Khasawneh, surrounded by ministers of Egypt, UAE, Jordan, and Bahrain at the signing ceremony in Amman (Asharq Al-Awsat)
    Amman, Cairo - Asharq Al-Awsat
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UAE, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain Sign $2 Bn Industrial Agreements

Jordan's Prime Minister Bishr al-Khasawneh, surrounded by ministers of Egypt, UAE, Jordan, and Bahrain at the signing ceremony in Amman (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Jordan's Prime Minister Bishr al-Khasawneh, surrounded by ministers of Egypt, UAE, Jordan, and Bahrain at the signing ceremony in Amman (Asharq Al-Awsat)

Egypt, the UAE, Jordan, and Bahrain signed 12 agreements and partnerships in nine integrated industrial projects with an investment value of more than $2 billion at the third Higher Committee meeting of the Industrial Partnership for Sustainable Economic Growth in Amman, Jordan.

The projects are expected to boost the national GDP in the partnering countries by more than $1.6 billion and create approximately 13,000 job opportunities.

Jordan's Prime Minister Bishr al-Khasawneh, Egypt's Minister of Industry and Trade, Ahmed Samir, UAE Minister of Industry and special envoy for climate change Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber, Jordan's Minister of Industry Yousef al-Shamali, and Bahrain's Minister of Industry Abdulla Adel Fakharo attended the signing ceremony.

Diverse agreements

The Egyptian company Soda Chemical Industries announced an investment of $500 million to produce sodium carbonate, 'soda ash,' the primary raw material in many industries, such as the glass and detergent sector.

The facility will have a production capacity of 500,000 tons annually.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed for a strategic partnership with the Emirates Float Glass Company, owned by Dubai Investments, to purchase the final product.

UAE-based automotive manufacturer M Glory Holding announced the launch of a large manufacturing project with an investment of $550 million to establish three electric vehicle factories with specialized production and assembly lines in the UAE, Jordan, and Egypt.

Production capacity will reach 40,000 compact crossover SUVs during the first three years of operation.

M Glory Holding signed another MoU with the Jordan Design and Development Bureau and Egypt's Arab Organization for Industrialization as manufacturing partners and with Bahrain's GARMCO to supply aluminum sheets.

The agreement exemplifies how the partnership aligns with sustainability objectives and the UAE's presidency of COP28.

Emirati investor-owned CFC Group announced it would invest $400 million to establish an industrial complex for fertilizers and chemicals in Egypt.

It signed MoUs with Jordan-based Arab Potash and Egypt's Misr Phosphate Company to supply raw materials.

The industrial complex will have an annual production capacity of half a ton of fodder, potash fertilizers, and 1.1 tons of chemicals.

Emirates Global Aluminum (EGA) announced a $200 million investment to establish a silicon metal plant in the UAE with a production capacity of 55,000 tons annually.

The company signed an MoU with Jordan's Manaseer Group to supply the required crystalline silica.

Manaseer Group announced the expansion of a $70 million magnesium oxide plant in Jordan. Once completed, the plant will have a total production capacity of 270,000 tons annually, which will be exported to the UAE.

It will sell its product to EGA., and production is set to commence in 2024.

UAE's Globalpharma partnered with Egypt's Nerhadou International to develop advanced technology for manufacturing medicines and food supplements.

An agreement was also signed to transfer technology to two Jordanian companies: Savvy Pharma and Triumph. Both projects will commence in 2023 with a total investment value of $60 million and a production capacity of five million packages annually per product.

Jordanian company Itqan announced a technology transfer partnership and contract manufacturing agreement with Globalpharma and ADCAN Pharma to manufacture syringes, aerosols, and inhalers.

It also signed an MoU with Egypt's Marcyrl to transfer technology in manufacturing biosimilars in Jordan with an investment value of $10 million to launch products by Q4 2024.

Bahrain-based Alpha Biotic signed two MoUs for knowledge and technology transfer and contracted manufacturing with Jordan's Dar Al Dawa and Egypt's EIPICO to produce generic, oncology, medical solutions, and other pharmaceutical products.

At an investment value of $174 million over two phases, the project's production capacity is expected to reach 350 million pills annually.

Gulf Biotech, another Bahraini company, announced plans to establish a plant to manufacture raw materials for vaccines and other products at an investment value of $103 million and a production capacity of 105 doses per year.

Gulf Biotech signed a technology transfer agreement with Egypt's BioGeneric Pharma earlier this month.

Developments in the industrial partnership

During the meetings, the Undersecretary of the UAE Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology Head of the Partnership's Executive Committee, Omar al-Suwaidi, presented an update on the partnership's progress, the findings of the partnership's workshops, investment opportunities, and plans for developing the partnership.

Suwaidi noted that more than 100 companies have participated in the metals, textiles, and petrochemical workshops held over the past six months.

The partnership has also received 35 proposals for new projects, discussed during workshops held by the Executive Committee in Amman.

The workshops also helped to prepare an implementation plan for enablers in the agriculture, food, fertilizers, and pharmaceutical sectors.

The official announced that the UAE and Jordan made a pharmaceutical mutual recognition agreement.

The committee studies the feasibility and economic impact of projects in various sectors and partnership opportunities with the private sector.

The committee will continue to search for new projects and evaluate and enable projects, including a fertilizer factory in Jordan at an estimated cost of $800 million.

The Executive Committee of the Integrated Industrial Partnership for Sustainable Economic Growth submitted recommendations and a report to the Higher Committee for approval.

It also discussed several potential projects and listened to representatives of industrial companies who presented project proposals.

Egypt's President of the Industrial Development Authority, Mohamed Abdel Kareem, briefed the committee on agricultural, fertilizer, and food developments.

Jordan's Secretary General of the Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Supply, Dana al-Zoubi, gave a presentation on developments in the pharmaceutical sector in her country.

Bahrain's Undersecretary of the Ministry of Industry, Iman al-Dosari, also briefly discussed the developments in minerals, petrochemicals, and textiles.

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Trump’s Tariff Push Is a Race against Time, and Potential Voter Backlash

Oranges are sold at a store in Annapolis, Maryland, on April 4, 2025. (AFP)
Oranges are sold at a store in Annapolis, Maryland, on April 4, 2025. (AFP)
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Trump’s Tariff Push Is a Race against Time, and Potential Voter Backlash

Oranges are sold at a store in Annapolis, Maryland, on April 4, 2025. (AFP)
Oranges are sold at a store in Annapolis, Maryland, on April 4, 2025. (AFP)

President Donald Trump's expansive new tariffs reverse a decades-long global trend of lower trade barriers and are likely, economists say, to raise prices for Americans by thousands of dollars each year while sharply slowing the US economy.

The White House is gambling that other countries will also suffer enough pain that they will open up their economies to more American exports, leading to negotiations that would reduce the tariffs imposed Wednesday.

Or, the White House hopes, companies will reverse their moves toward global supply chains and bring more production to the United States to avoid higher import taxes.

How will Americans react? But a key question for the Trump administration will be how Americans react to the tariffs. If prices rise noticeably and jobs are lost, voters could turn against the duties and make it harder to keep them in place for the time needed to encourage companies to return to the US.

The Yale Budget Lab estimates the Trump administration's tariffs would cost the average household $3,800 in higher prices this year. That includes the 10% universal tariff plus much higher tariffs on about 60 countries announced Wednesday, as well as previous import taxes on steel, aluminum and cars. Inflation could top 4% this year, from 2.8% currently, while the economy may barely grow, according to estimates by Nationwide Financial.

Investors turned thumbs-down on the new duties Thursday, with the S&P 500 index dropping 4.8% at the close of trading, its worst day since the pandemic. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged more than 1,600 points.

Still, Trump was upbeat Thursday when asked about the stock market drop.

"I think it’s going very well," he said. "We have an operation, like when a patient gets operated on and it’s a big thing. I said this would exactly be the way it is."

The average US tariff could rise to nearly 25% when the tariffs are fully implemented April 9, economists estimate, higher than in more than a century, and higher than the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs that are widely blamed for worsening the Great Depression.

"The president just announced the de facto separation of the US economy from the global economy," said Mary Lovely, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "The stage is set for higher prices and slower growth over the long term."

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick argued the policies will help open markets overseas for US exports.

"I expect most countries to start to really examine their trade policy towards the United States of America, and stop picking on us," he said on CNBC Thursday. "This is the reordering of fair trade."

Bob Lehmann, 73, who stopped by a Best Buy in Portland, Oregon, Wednesday opposed the tariffs. "They’re going to raise prices and cause people to pay more for daily living," he said.

Mathew Hall, a 64-year-old paint contractor, called the tariffs a "great idea" and said potential price increases in the short term were worth it.

"I believe in the long term, it’s going to be good," he said, adding that he felt the US had been taken advantage of.

But a former trade official from Trump’s first term, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk candidly about the impact, suggested that Americans, including those who voted for Trump, may have difficulty accepting the stiff duties.

Americans "have never faced tariffs like this," the former official said Thursday. "The downstream impact on clothing and shoe stores, it’s going to be pretty significant. So we’ll have to see how the Trump voters view this ... and how long their support for these policies goes."

On Thursday, automaker Stellantis, which owns the Jeep, Citroen and Ram brands, said it would temporarily halt production at plants in Canada and Mexico in response to Trump's 25% tax on imported cars. The reduced output means the company is temporarily laying off 900 workers at plants in Michigan and Indiana.

Some exporters overseas may cut their prices to offset some of the tariffs, and US retailers could eat some of the cost as well. But most economists expect much of the tariffs to bring higher prices.

The tariffs will hit many Asian countries hard, with duties on Vietnamese imports rising to 46% and on Indonesia to 32%. Tariffs on some Chinese imports will be as high as 79%. Those three countries are the top sources of US shoe imports, with Nike making about half its shoes last year and one-third of its clothes in Vietnam.

The Yale Budget Lab estimates all Trump’s tariffs this year will push clothing prices 17% higher.

On Thursday, the Home Furnishings Association, which represents more than 13,000 US furniture stores, predicted the tariffs will increase prices between 10% and 46%. Vietnam and China are the top furniture exporters to the US.

It said manufacturers in Asia are offsetting some of the costs by discounting their products and lowering ocean freight rates, but that won't be enough to avoid price hikes. Even domestically made furniture often relies on imported components.

"While many in the industry support the long-term goal of reshoring manufacturing, the reality is that it will take at least a decade to scale domestic production," Home Furnishings Association CEO Shannon Williams said in a statement. "Permitting, training a skilled workforce and managing the higher costs of US manufacturing are significant hurdles."

At Gethsemane Garden Center in Chicago, there are Canadian-grown tulip, daffodil and hyacinth bulbs, though only about 5% of center plants are imported. Thousands of lemon cypress trees from Canada are sold year-round and Canadian mums are sold in the fall.

Regas Chefas, whose family has owned Gethsemane for decades, says all the tariffs won't be passed onto customers.

"We’re going to absorb some of the increase. The growers will absorb some of the increases and then the customers will pay a little bit higher price," he said.

The Consumer Brands Association, which represents Coca-Cola, General Mills, Nestle, Tyson and Del Monte as well as Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive, said its companies already make the majority of their goods in the US.

But there are critical ingredients and inputs — like wood pulp for toilet paper — that are imported because of scarce domestic availability. Cinnamon is harvested from trees that can’t survive in the US. Domestic production of coffee and cocoa is also limited.

"We encourage President Trump and his trade advisers to fine-tune their approach and exempt key ingredients and inputs in order to protect manufacturing jobs and prevent unnecessary inflation at the grocery store," said Tom Madrecki, the association’s vice president of supply chain resiliency.

Outside a Tractor Supply south of Denver, two family members on opposite sides of the political spectrum debated the tariffs.

Chris Theisen, a 62-year-old Republican, said: "I feel a good change coming on, I feel it’s going to be hard, but you don’t go to the gym and walk away and say, ’God, I feel great."

Nayen Shakya, a Democrat and Theisen’s great nephew, said higher prices are already a hardship. At the restaurant where he works, menu prices have been raised to account for higher ingredient costs.

"It’s really easy sometimes to say some things in a vague way that everyone can agree with that is definitely more complex under the surface," said Shakya. "The burden of the increased prices is already going to the consumer."

Listening to his nephew, Theisen added: "I understand this side of it, too."

"I ain’t got no crystal ball. I hope it works out good."