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President Trump wrapping up his four-day Middle East trip with a number of deals secured, including multi-billion dollar investments in the US by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. AI was a big focus with Washington and Abu Dhabi entering a partnership to build the biggest data center outside of US. Chipmakers also inking deals with Saudi's new AI company Humana, allowing the Gulf Nation to access the most advanced chips from Nvidia and AMD. Joining us now with more former Morocco ambassador Mark Ginsberg, who served as ambassador under the Clinton Administration and as White House Middle East advisor under the Carter Administration. We also have Ben Steel, senior fellow and director of International Economics for the Council on Foreign Relations, and of course, still with me, Victoria Fernandez, chief market strategist at Crossmark Global Investments. Thank you all for being here for the conversation. Ambassador Ginsberg, I want to start with you because I'm curious about what these deals signal for American companies going forward. I get the sense that the fact that so many CEOs were willing to follow the president to the Middle East and ink their own deals with the Middle East is a signal of maybe a framework that CEOs may want to follow moving forward if they want something from the administration. What do you think about that?

Well, the rug bazaar was wide open. And uh the fact is is that for purposes of looking at how much how many trillions of billions of deals were actually penned, we'll see what the bottom lines are. There's a lot of dollar signs that are being thrown around here. But the fact that remains is that uh President Trump is a great salesman. And in these three Arab states, the wealthiest of them all in the region, uh there's no doubt that there is an interest to more tightly tie these countries to American industry as well as to American security. And uh the investments that are being made by these countries are not just purely commercial, they're also intended to secure an American umbrella of security commitment to the region, which uh these Arab states are, shall we say, quite wary of given Trump's administration and one point oh's reluctance to involve itself in the security of these countries, not withstanding the Abraham Accords.

And then come on into the conversation for us. What do you make of the way that these deals announced in the Middle East over the course of this week have potentially signaled a reordering of global superpowers and allyship, uh particularly given the closeness of the US and the Middle East now versus the relationship that's ongoing with China?

Sure. Politically, this was quite a dramatic development. As you know, the Israelis are a bit discomforted by how close uh the Trump administration now appears to be uh to the Gulf states. Um from an economic perspective, um this is a rather remarkable shift in policy. The Biden administration, as you know, was concerned to limit um the expansion of AI infrastructure out of the United States abroad. Uh President Trump, of course, had made it a centerpiece of his presidential campaign to um reshore major manufacturing business and to prevent it's um going abroad. But now we're seeing the potential for massive AI infrastructure investments abroad that really um adds a lot of uncertainty as to what the bottom line is in terms of US trade and investment policy right now.

And my guest host Victoria has a question as well.

Yes, Ben, talking about the economic policy looking at it through that lens, do you think that these deals that are being made or that have been made this past week allows this administration then to go harder on China again after this 90-day trial period is up?

That's a very good question because, of course, uh the Chinese have also been trying to embed themselves politically and economically more deeply in the Middle East and the Gulf region. Um I think, however, what we've learned over the last six weeks since liberation day is that Donald Trump is very um sensitive to market moves, and I really don't think at this point, um he wants to be promoting any negative messages with regard to the relationship with China. Um as we saw with the recent framework deal that was announced, Treasury Secretary Besant actually emphasized uh that the United States does not want to hurt China, does not want to decouple from China. This is a remarkable change in rhetoric from the presidential campaign when candidate Trump said that we were quote unquote going to tariff the hell out of China.