{"id":12095,"date":"2026-04-26T23:21:49","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T23:21:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/26\/trump-and-saudi-arabia-more-transactional-than-ever-georgetown-journal-of-international-affairs\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T23:21:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T23:21:49","slug":"trump-and-saudi-arabia-more-transactional-than-ever-georgetown-journal-of-international-affairs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/26\/trump-and-saudi-arabia-more-transactional-than-ever-georgetown-journal-of-international-affairs\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump and Saudi Arabia: More Transactional Than Ever – Georgetown Journal of International Affairs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew Leber
April 26, 2026
In President Trump\u2019s second term, his foreign-policy approach to Saudi Arabia has been more transactional than ever before. While U.S. presidents have long sought economic gains from the Kingdom alongside other policy goals, Trump has made investments from, partnerships with, and high-value U.S. exports to Saudi Arabia the central policy aim of the bilateral relationship. While this approach may deliver up-front benefits (in some cases to the President himself, along with his family), it forgoes opportunities for regional conflict resolution while doing little to dissuade the president from a destructive conflict with Iran.<\/em>
During Donald Trump\u2019s first term in office, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia played an important role as both a key partner in achieving the president\u2019s foreign policy aims and as a target of criticism. In seeking to coordinate with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states against Iran, push the Kingdom to normalize ties with Israel, and secure lucrative deals for U.S. weapons manufacturers, Trump\u2019s first administration pushed the limits of a U.S.-Saudi relationship rooted in interests, not values<\/a>. Yet high-profile human rights violations led Congress to apply unusual scrutiny to these arms deals, and Democratic candidate Joe Biden to label the Kingdom a \u201cpariah\u201d on the 2020 campaign trail.
After the intervening years of the Biden administration, Trump views the U.S.-Saudi relationship as one primarily of economic dealmaking. Trump presents the Kingdom\u2019s domestic economic transformation as a bonanza that can deliver (or at least promise to deliver) extraordinary amounts of investment dollars and purchase orders to U.S. companies while opening up lucrative new opportunities in the Saudi domestic economy. In exchange, Trump has been happy to grant the Kingdom economic and security concessions previously pegged to other big diplomatic \u201casks,\u201d like potentially normalizing relations with Israel. Despite the initial appeal of a purely transactional relationship to both parties, it has ultimately done little to commit the United States to regional peace or prosperity\u2014a troubling situation given the weekslong U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and its fallout for the region.
The first Trump administration\u2019s relationship with Saudi Arabia centered on U.S.-Gulf alignment against shared antagonists. Trump prioritized the Kingdom for his first trip abroad in 2017, where he railed against<\/a> the threats posed by Sunni Muslim terrorists as well as Iran and Iran-backed proxy groups. Barely a year later, Trump defended<\/a> Saudi Arabia from U.S. domestic backlash over the murder of media figure Jamal Khashoggi by citing the Kingdom\u2019s role as \u201ca great ally\u201d against Iran and as committed to fighting \u201cRadical Islamic Terrorism.\u201d While other goals periodically gained Trump\u2019s attention \u2013 such as oil prices, whether too high<\/a> or too low<\/a> \u2013 shared threat perceptions formed the strategic core of the relationship.
The administration\u2019s second focus<\/a> was on the Gulf states\u2019 \u201ccommon interests with Israel in confronting common threats.\u201d Even during the Obama administration, there was a growing belief that Gulf royals\u2019 fears of Iranian influence could facilitate greater, if tacit, coordination with Israel on security. For Trump, this took the form of promoting a much-touted \u201cDeal of the Century\u201d\u2014region-wide recognition of Israel in exchange for nominal progress towards Israeli-Palestinian peace. While Trump and his Middle East point person (and son-in-law) Jared Kushner fell short of this goal, they surprised many by securing the Abraham Accords: full normalization between Israel and the UAE (soon joined by Bahrain, Morocco, and\u2014for a brief window\u2014Sudan\u2019s transitional government). While historic, the 2020 deal left out Saudi Arabia; Trump\u2019s subsequent election loss reduced immediate pressure<\/a> for Riyadh to follow suit.
The Trump administration also pursued side deals rooted in Saudi security fears. \u201cWe are bringing back hundreds of billions of dollars into the United States,\u201d President Trump said in March 2018, brandishing<\/a> posters of U.S. military equipment for sale in an Oval Office meeting with MBS. The President boasted of tens of thousands of U.S. jobs created or sustained by Saudi arms sales (an exaggeration<\/a>), alongside other pledged Saudi investments. Trump officials overrode<\/a> periodic objections from Congress over Saudi military activity and other human rights abuses, albeit somewhat pressuring<\/a> Riyadh to wind down its involvement in neighboring Yemen\u2019s civil war.
In 2025, the bilateral relationship under the second Trump administration at first seemed to reflect a changed regional threat environment. After the Trump administration ultimately declined to strike Iran to deter attacks on Saudi Arabia, and the Biden administration proved unable or unwilling to strike a renewed nuclear agreement, Saudi leaders re-established diplomatic ties<\/a> with Iran in a 2023 summit pointedly held in Beijing. Israel\u2019s devastating response to the October 7th<\/sup> attacks in turn exacerbated the political risks<\/a> of normalization to Saudi leaders, even as Israeli attacks on Iran\u2019s regional proxy network \u2013 and eventually Iran itself \u2013 undercut Saudi fears<\/a> of Iranian power projection.
Still, these changes appeared compatible with a second Trump term focused on economic dealmaking as the core of transactional U.S.-Gulf relationships. Key to this was the Kingdom\u2019s Vision 2030 project of socio-economic transformation, which, among other developments, placed large economic bets<\/a> on diversifying the Saudi economy away from oil and employing more Saudi citizens. The Trump administration worked to ensure that U.S. firms, including the Trump Organization, benefited from these bets, particularly in the realm of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
Within days of Trump\u2019s inauguration, MBS joined other favor-seekers by pledging some $600 billion<\/a> worth of new Saudi investments in the United States. During Trump\u2019s subsequent visit to Riyadh in May, Trump downplayed the threat posed by ISIS (\u201cwiped them out\u201d) and Iran (\u201cno money left\u201d) in favor of highlighting economic dynamism<\/a> in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies. The trip touted not only Saudi investments in the United States but U.S.-Saudi business partnerships, especially in the tech sector, and yet another enormous arms deal\u2014all ostensibly part of kicking off a \u201cgolden age of the Middle East<\/a>.\u201d A return visit by MBS in November offered more of the same, increasing Saudi investment pledges to $1 trillion and emphasizing Saudi collaboration<\/a> with U.S. tech firms like Advanced Micro Devices, Qualcomm, Nvidia, and Elon Musk\u2019s xAI. Trump in turn went from merely defending Saudi Arabia to denouncing<\/a> \u201cWestern interventionists\u201d who criticized human rights abuses and praising<\/a> MBS for doing \u201cincredible [things] in terms of human rights and everything else.\u201d
The best argument for this transactional relationship is that it would put America first\u2014securing U.S. economic interests while steering clear of regional conflicts. The 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS), for example, presents the Middle East<\/a> as \u201ca place of partnership, friendship, and investment\u201d amid diminished regional conflict. Even if the President blurred the lines between U.S. interests and his own economic interests, or those of his family, perhaps the United States and Saudi Arabia alike could benefit<\/a> from a clear focus on the bottom line. That might put a positive spin on the Public Investment Fund (PIF) investing $2 billion<\/a> in an investment fund controlled by Trump\u2019s son-in-law, the PIF-backed LIV Golf Tour holding numerous of events<\/a> at Trump properties, and (privately owned<\/a>) Saudi conglomerate Dar Global  paying millions to put the Trump Organization\u2019s brand on regional real-estate deals.
Until Trump\u2019s decision to join Israel in attacking Iran, this transactionalism seemed like it might even facilitate regional conflict resolution. Saudi Arabia used the opportunity of Trump\u2019s visit to broker a meeting<\/a> with Syrian President Ahmed Sharaa, getting critical U.S. backing for ending economic sanctions<\/a> on a post-Assad Syria. Trump proved willing to strong-arm Israel into accepting a shaky ceasefire in Gaza, while refraining from any punitive action against Saudi Arabia for co-sponsoring efforts at greater international recognition of Palestine. President Trump also seemed content to leave Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords as a \u201cfervent hope, wish and even [a] dream<\/a>,\u201d rather than contesting Saudi insistence on a pathway to Palestinian statehood. MBS likewise brought up potential U.S. mediation in the Sudanese civil war, albeit perhaps with the ulterior motive of geopolitical maneuvering against the neighboring UAE.
Transactionalism is hardly a new feature of the U.S.-Saudi relationship. Successive U.S. administrations<\/a> have worked to ensure that U.S. companies benefit from the Kingdom\u2019s oil wealth, while Riyadh has been happy to bankroll ventures broadly aligned with U.S. foreign- and domestic-policy goals. Still, hollowing out U.S. foreign policy to merely a sense that what\u2019s good for the President is good for the country helps explain how the United States found itself mired in a costly war of choice with Iran that has undermined the potential for peace and prosperity in the Middle East.
Even before the Iran war, diplomacy as mere \u201cdealmaking\u201d left the United States unable to prevent destabilizing conflicts or convert temporary deals into sustainable peace. Major U.S. tech deals with both Saudi Arabia and the UAE were insufficient to keep competition between<\/em> the two countries from hindering regional economic activity<\/a> and exacerbating<\/a> conflicts in Sudan, Yemen, and elsewhere. Subcontracting conflict resolution to local actors occasionally produced good outcomes, such as Saudi efforts to stabilize and invest in a post-Assad Syria. Yet the lack of investment in diplomatic expertise leaves the Trump administration ill-equipped to handle the messy process of drafting and negotiating durable compromises.
Worse, the payoff from these deals did little to dissuade Trump from coordinating with Israel to strike Iran\u2014with immediate and obvious consequences<\/a> for Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies. The Iran War shows that what is supposedly good for the President is often the emotional high of dominating perceived enemies and pushing for dramatic \u201cwins\u201d rather than material returns for himself and the U.S. economy. The war has damaged Saudi Arabia\u2019s economy and U.S. prospects for benefiting therein; Saudi investment pledges are less likely to materialize amid new reconstruction and defense bills for the kingdom. For Saudi Arabia, the war should also make it clear that Trump views the kingdom less as an economic partner and more as vassal states paying tribute. During the war\u2014at a Saudi investment conference, no less\u2014Trump renewed pressure on Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords<\/a> and crudely mocked MBS for having little choice<\/a> but to accept U.S. war-making.
With no upside for Trump\u2019s transactionalism, the U.S. Congress has every reason to exercise robust oversight of any deals struck with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies\u2014both those in the \u201cnational\u201d interest and those more narrowly in President Trump\u2019s interest. AI technology deals entail shipping sensitive U.S. technologies to countries known for extensive electronic surveillance, yet few of details<\/a> of supposed safeguards have been made public. A proposed nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia might deliver a \u201cmulti-billion-dollar nuclear energy partnership\u201d to U.S. companies, yet recent reporting<\/a> suggests that it lacks important nonproliferation guardrails. By contrast, Congress should push to include a Saudi role in fraught U.S.-Iranian negotiations to ensure at least one actor in that process has an interest in long-term peace and stability in the Persian Gulf.
. . .<\/strong>
Andrew Leber<\/strong><\/a> is an Assistant Professor at Tulane University\u2019s Department of Political Science and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His publications have appeared in Governance, Security Studies, Democratization, and Politics & Society.<\/em>
Image Credit: The White House<\/a>, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n

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Email address<\/span> E.<\/span> gjia@georgetown.edu<\/a>
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs Qatar
Georgetown University in Qatar, Education City \u2013 Qatar Foundation
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ICC 301<\/span>
37th and O Streets, N.W.<\/span>
Washington<\/span> DC<\/span> 20057<\/span>
Email address<\/span> E.<\/span> gjia@georgetown.edu<\/a>
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs Qatar
Georgetown University in Qatar, Education City \u2013 Qatar Foundation
Doha, Qatar
\u00a9 2026 Walsh School of Foreign Service<\/p>\n

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Andrew LeberApril 26, 2026In President Trump\u2019s second term, his foreign-policy approach to Saudi Arabia has been more transactional than ever before. While U.S. presidents have long sought economic gains from the Kingdom alongside other policy goals, Trump has made investments from, partnerships with, and high-value U.S. exports to Saudi Arabia the central policy aim of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12095","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}