Trump hails Saudi Arabia at investment event in Miami

Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

• ‘Special place with special leaders’
• First US president at PIF event
• Pledge to increase oil production

Donald Trump’s speech on the opening day of a Saudi-backed investor summit in Miami once again highlighted the close relationship the US president is nurturing with the world’s second-largest oil producer.

Calling Saudi Arabia a “special place with special leaders”, Trump individually greeted Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of the state-owned Public Investment Fund (PIF), and Mohammed bin Abdullah al-Jadaan, the Saudi finance minister and chairman of Aramco.

Not all Trump’s speech would have been music to Saudi ears, as the US president dug further into his “drill, baby, drill” pledge to raise US domestic energy production and drive lower global oil prices.

Saudi Arabia leads the Opec cartel in production.

“We have more energy than any other nation in the world and we are going to use it,” Trump said on Wednesday at the gathering at the Faena Hotel in Miami Beach

Trump also called out the UAE-based developer Damac’s commitment to invest $20 billion in American data centres, and the new $500 billion Stargate joint venture involving OpenAI, Softbank and Oracle, as well as the Emirati artificial intelligence-focused investor MGX.

The event, now in its third edition, was organised by the Future Investment Initiative (FII), an eight-year-old global forum created under the umbrella of the Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. 

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This was the first time a US president has spoken at the Miami event. Elon Musk, who co-heads Trump’s newly created Department of Government Efficiency, was also there.

As part of an increasingly high-profile relationship with the United States under President Trump, earlier this week Saudi Arabia hosted talks between the US and Russian foreign ministers aimed at paving the way for a resolution to the Ukraine war.

In late January, during the first phone call Trump held with a foreign leader after returning to the White House, the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, pledged $600 billion of trade and investment in the US over Trump’s four-year term.

Observers later told AGBI that the figure was more likely to be in the $100 to $200 billion range, given Saudi Arabia’s own domestic investment needs under Vision 2030, and fiscal constraints driven by rising public debt and relatively low oil prices.