Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia told President Trump on Wednesday that the kingdom intends to increase its investment and trade with the United States by at least $600 billion over the next four years, according to the official Saudi Press Agency.
Mr. Trump has promised to accelerate investment in the United States, particularly to help revive manufacturing, and warned of retaliation, including tariffs, against any governments he sees as acting against U.S. interests.
The crown prince, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, told Mr. Trump that his new administration had the ability to create “unprecedented economic prosperity” in the United States and that his country wanted to participate, a statement from the Saudi Press Agency said.
There was no immediate confirmation of the call from the White House.
The Saudi promise followed what have been seen as public displays of fealty to Mr. Trump by America’s biggest tech companies and some of Silicon Valley’s most powerful executives. While campaigning last year, he said he would use a mix of tax cuts and tariffs to force companies to invest in the United States.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump announced Stargate, a joint venture between OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle that is intended to create at least $100 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure. The initiative could invest as much as $500 billion over four years.
Saudi Arabia was Mr. Trump’s first stop during his first foreign trip as president in 2017, and he pursued major deals with the kingdom, including arms sales, during that term.
Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday that Saudi Arabia was his first foreign stop during his previous term because “they agreed to buy $450 billion worth of our product.”
“If Saudi Arabia wanted to buy another 450 or 500, we’ll up it for all the inflation, I think I’d probably go there,” he said, after a journalist asked him which country he planned to visit first in his second term.
Mr. Trump developed a good relationship with the crown prince, standing by him despite the C.I.A.’s assessment that he had likely ordered the killing and dismemberment of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
