Trump heads to Saudi Arabia soon, looking for a repeat of his trip in 2017

President Trump says his first trip to Saudi Arabia in 2017 yielded big business deals. We look back to see how things worked out.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

When President Trump heads to Saudi Arabia next week, so will some of the nation's top business leaders. Trump is looking for a repeat of his first foreign trip as president in 2017, when he also visited the kingdom and announced billions of dollars in Saudi investment in U.S. companies. NPR's senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith has more.

TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: In Riyadh, President Trump was given an extravagant welcome.

UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTISTS: (Singing in non-English language).

KEITH: There was a traditional sword dance, a new counterterrorism center symbolically activated by a glowing orb, and the promise of arms sales.

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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Hundreds of billions of dollars of investments into the United States and jobs, jobs, jobs.

KEITH: Then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced nearly $110 billion in arms sales, with potential other investments growing to as much as $350 billion.

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REX TILLERSON: These are going to result in literally hundreds of thousands of American jobs.

KEITH: But the numbers were squishy. Some of the deals had been announced months before the trip. Others were at such preliminary stages there was no guarantee they would pan out. The Trump administration at the time did not publicly release a complete, detailed list of projects and planned weapon sales.

BECCA WASSER: Was the deal even really what it said in the first place? And the answer to that is no.

KEITH: Becca Wasser is at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank with strong ties to the Democratic Party. I called her asking for help trying to figure out how many of the arms sales actually went ahead.

WASSER: Because in 2017, this was really just, you know, a mirage, if you will, of a larger deal, it's really unclear what actually went through and when. Also arms sales are notoriously hard to track.

KEITH: The State Department says that since Trump's 2017 trip, the U.S. government has implemented $30 billion in foreign military sales cases with Saudi Arabia. Put another way, when Trump announced U.S. companies would sell $110 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, that was only just the beginning. John Parachini is a senior defense researcher at the Rand Corporation.

JOHN PARACHINI: There are a lot of steps in any arms sales process.

KEITH: A process that involves complex negotiations, multiple federal agencies, Congress, arms manufacturers and the customer countries - but that complexity wasn't part of how Trump sold it.

PARACHINI: That's the style of this particular president. He's wanting to send a strong signal that he's supporting American business. But these things are really complicated and can take years.

KEITH: As for the commercial deals, many weren't made public. Back in 2017, one Houston-based oil industry supplier announced that Saudi Arabia would purchase 50 onshore drilling rigs over a decade, but in a recent earnings call, said only 11 have been delivered so far. It's not unusual for business announcements to happen during presidential trips and for the White House to brag about them, says Don Graves, who was deputy secretary of commerce in the Biden administration.

DON GRAVES: There's some packaging that goes on by every administration. You're trying to market yourself. You're trying to claim credit for deals.

KEITH: But, he says, the partnerships the Trump administration hailed in 2017 were far from done deals. Now, as Trump prepares to return to the kingdom, Saudi Arabia has said it is aiming for $600 billion in new announcements. Trump, for his part, says he wants more.

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TRUMP: Fifty billion - I said, well, this time, they've gotten richer. We've all gotten older. So I said, I'll go if you pay a trillion dollars - $1 trillion - to American companies.

KEITH: Deals are expected in the defense, energy, AI and health care sectors. Tamara Keith, NPR News.

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