By Gram Slattery, Andrew Mills, Federico Maccioni and Yousef Saba
ABU DHABI (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Thursday pledged to strengthen U.S. ties to the United Arab Emirates on a visit to the Gulf state that is expected to deepen cooperation on artificial intelligence.
Trump began a visit to the UAE on the latest stage of a tour of wealthy Gulf states after hailing plans by Doha to invest $10 billion in a U.S. military facility during a trip to Qatar.
“I have absolutely no doubt that the relationship will only get bigger and better,” Trump said in a meeting with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
“Your wonderful brother came to Washington a few weeks ago and he told us about your generous statement as to the 1.4 trillion,” Trump said, referring to a UAE pledge to invest $1.4 trillion in the U.S. over 10 years.
Trump was referring to Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Sheikh Mohamed’s brother and the UAE’s national security adviser and chairman of two of Abu Dhabi’s deep-pocketed sovereign wealth funds.
“And all I can say is thank you very much,” Trump added. “We will work very hard to deserve it.”
Sheikh Mohamed told Trump the UAE was “keen to continue and strengthen this friendship for the benefit of the two countries and peoples,” adding to Trump: “your presence here today, your excellency, the president, confirms that this keenness is mutual.”
Before his departure for the UAE, Trump said in a speech to U.S. troops at the Al Udeid Air Base southwest of Doha that defence purchases signed by Qatar on Wednesday are worth $42 billion.
He was met at the airport in Abu Dhabi by Sheikh Mohamed, and the two leaders visited the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, its white minarets and domes, impressive in the late-afternoon light.
“It is so beautiful,” Trump told reporters inside the mosque, which he said had been closed for the day.
“First time they closed it. It’s in honor of the United States. Better than in honor of me. Let’s give it to the country. That’s a great tribute.”
The UAE’s leaders want U.S. help to make their wealthy Gulf nation a global leader in artificial intelligence.
The U.S. has a preliminary agreement with the UAE to allow it to import 500,000 of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips a year, starting this year, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
The deal would boost the UAE’s construction of data centres vital to developing artificial intelligence models. But the agreement has provoked national security concerns among sectors of the U.S. government, and the terms could change, sources said.
At the presidential palace, Trump and Sheikh Mohamed could be seen in TV footage in conversation with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
Trump said he would probably return to Washington on Friday after a regional trip that began on Tuesday, although he said it was “almost destination unknown – because they’ll be getting calls ‘could you be here? Could you be there?'”
Trump had hinted that he could stop in Istanbul for talks on Ukraine.
The two countries have finalised a technology framework agreement that was expected to be signed later on Thursday, a source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
The agreement requires commitments on both sides to the security of technology, the source said, without immediately providing details.
DEALS, DIPLOMACY
Some big business agreements have been signed during Trump’s four-day swing through the Gulf region, including a deal for Qatar Airways to purchase up to 210 Boeing widebody jets, a $600 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia to invest in the U.S. and $142 billion in U.S. arms sales to the kingdom.
The trip has also brought a flurry of diplomacy.
Trump said in Qatar that the United States was getting very close to securing a nuclear deal with Iran, and Tehran had “sort of” agreed to the terms.
He also announced on Tuesday that the U.S. would remove longstanding sanctions on Syria and subsequently met with Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
He urged Sharaa to establish ties with Syria’s longtime foe Israel.
AI is likely to be a focus of the final leg of Trump’s trip.
Former U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration had imposed strict oversight of exports of U.S. AI chips to the Middle East and other regions. Among the Biden administration’s fears were that the prized semiconductors would be diverted to China and buttress Beijing’s military strength.
Trump has made improving ties with some Gulf countries a key goal of his administration. If all the proposed chip deals in Gulf states, and the UAE in particular, come together, the region would become a third power centre in global AI competition after the United States and China.
Trump compared his visit to Saudi Arabia with one by his predecessor in 2022, when Biden gave the Saudi crown prince a fist bump.
“I shook more hands, more than any human being is capable of doing,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “He travels all the way to Saudi Arabia, in that case, and he gives him a fist bump. That’s not what they want. They don’t want a fist bump. They want to shake his hand.”
(Reporting by Gram Slattery and Andrew Mills in Doha and Federico Maccioni, Nayera Abdallah and Tala Ramadan in Dubai; Additional reporting by Yousef Saba, Karen Freifeld and Hadeel Al Sayegh; Writing by Michael Georgy, Gram Slattery, Timothy Heritage Matt Spetalnick and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Andrew Heavens, William Maclean and Alistair Bell)
