One day after he spoke to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, President Donald Trump pushed the kingdom Thursday to increase its U.S. investment, saying he would ask the Saudis to “round out” their promised $600 billion “to around $1 trillion.”
“I think they’ll do that because we’ve been very good to them,” Trump said in virtual remarks to business and foreign leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. During Wednesday’s call, Trump’s first with a foreign leader since his inauguration Monday, the crown prince, the kingdom’s de facto head, told Trump he would invest at least $600 billion in the United States over the next four years, according to a readout provided by the Saudi government.
Trump, addressing the crowd at Davos on Thursday, also said he would push Saudi Arabia and OPEC to bring down the price of oil.
“You got to bring it down, which, frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t do before the election,” he said. “That didn’t show a lot of love by them not doing it. I was a little surprised by that.”
Crude oil prices fell after Trump’s remarks, while U.S. stocks jumped.
In a rollicking address, Trump ticked through the sweep of actions he has taken to yank back much of Joe Biden’s presidency and launch his own agenda, covering everything from Middle East peace to a new official policy charging that “there are only two genders, male and female.”
“We’ve accomplished more in four days — we have really been working four days — than other administrations have accomplished in four years,” Trump said. “And we’re just getting started.”
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And he didn’t shy away from pressing his interlocutors directly.
After a question from Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, Trump charged that financial institutions, including Bank of America, had refused banking services to conservatives. He also warned the business and foreign leaders before him that “if you don’t make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then, very simply, you will have to pay a tariff.”
Bank of America pushed back against Trump’s claims in a statement, saying, “We welcome conservatives and have no political litmus test.”
JPMorgan Chase said, “We have never and would never close an account for political reasons, full stop.”
Trump has littered his return to Washington with promises to drive a multibillion-dollar surge of investments in the U.S. economy, shore up American industry and level new tariffs in trade negotiations.
He has threatened steep tariffs on other countries, including Canada and Mexico, which he said could start as early as Feb. 1, and also threatened the European Union. And he has moved to quickly expand domestic energy production, kick off an immigration crackdown and pull the United States from the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization.
The virtual address and subsequent question session marked Trump’s first major speech to foreign and business leaders since he assumed office. Trump’s allies have long derided the global elites at Davos as working to undermine Trump’s agenda, but he was given a warm welcome from the organizers and executives onstage, despite a rollout of policies in his first days in office that captured his nationalist tendencies.
Later, Trump explained how he sees the U.S.-China relationship and said he wants Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him end the war in Ukraine, where, he said, too many millions of soldiers have died on a “killing field.” He said Kyiv “is ready to make a deal” and suggested Russian President Vladimir Putin remains a holdout. “You are going to have to ask Russia,” Trump said when he was asked whether a peace agreement could come together by this time next year.
Trump said in September that if he were re-elected, he would end the nearly three-year-long war in Ukraine on Day One of his presidency or possibly before. But a peace deal seemed far off this week, and Trump threatened Wednesday to impose sanctions and tariffs on Russia and its allies if the war doesn’t end soon.
“We can do it the easy way, or the hard way — and the easy way is always better,” he said on Truth Social. “It’s time to ‘MAKE A DEAL.'”
Asked at Davos about a call he held with Xi last week, Trump clarified that it wasn’t him reaching out. Xi “called me,” Trump said, nodding to how he views a key relationship that has been complicated by trade talks and the Covid pandemic, which originated in China.
