Trump’s Gulf tour is all about business
President Trump has always viewed the presidency as a worldwide hunt for deals. Today he is set to begin a four-day swing through Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, and he has told his advisers that he wants to announce deals worth more than $1 trillion.
In place of any grand strategy will be a series of financial transactions that Trump will promote as producers of jobs for American workers. He is pushing Saudi leaders to invest a sum equivalent to Saudi Arabia’s entire annual gross domestic product.
Trump’s agenda conveniently aligns with his expanding business plans. His family has six deals pending with a majority Saudi-owned real estate firm, a cryptocurrency deal with a U.A.E. affiliate and a new golf and luxury villa project backed by Qatar.
A questionable gift: The Qatari royal family is going to great lengths to court Trump, offering as a donation a luxury Boeing 747-8 plane that will be upgraded to serve as Air Force One. Trump angrily brushed off ethical concerns about the gift yesterday, saying that only someone “stupid” would turn down such an offer.
Gaza: Hamas yesterday released Edan Alexander, the last living U.S. hostage it held in Gaza, portraying the gesture as an attempt to secure U.S. backing for a deal to end the war.
More U.S. political news:
The U.S. and China temporarily slashed tariffs
The U.S. and China agreed yesterday that they would suspend their respective tariffs for 90 days and continue negotiations. Trump said that he expected to talk to President Xi Jinping of China this week, but that a full deal would take awhile.
The White House appeared to be backing down as the costs of an all-out trade war were threatening the global economy. The tariff truce was another illustration of the limitations of Trump’s aggressive approach to trade.
After two days of talks in Geneva, the U.S. agreed to reduce the tariffs on Chinese imports to 30 percent from 145 percent, while China lowered its import duty on U.S. goods to 10 percent from 125 percent. Global stocks surged after the announcement. Here’s what else to know.
Latin America: This week, Xi is hosting Brazil’s president and other officials from Latin America and the Caribbean in Beijing to underscore that China intends to keep a firm foothold in that region.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine challenged Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, to meet him for talks in Turkey on Thursday. Trump raised the stakes by saying that he might take part in that meeting. The Kremlin did not immediately respond to the suggestion that Trump might attend.
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Don Pettit, an astronaut for NASA, brought his camera on a 220-day rotation at the International Space Station. He captured dwarf galaxies, rhythmic auroras and the streaking lights of fishing boats on Earth.
“There is so much techno-geek stuff to see, or you can simply sit back and think, How cool,” he said. Take a look.
Lives lived: Koyo Kouoh, a prominent figure in the global art world who was poised to become the first African woman to curate the Venice Biennale, died at 57.
A rocky start for auction week
The art world is staring down a weaker-than-average season after years of declining profits. One hotly anticipated auction, held last night at Christie’s in New York, proved anticlimactic and lacked the enthusiastic buyers who defined the market’s peak in 2022.
A 1922 gridded painting by Mondrian, above, sold for $47.6 million, including fees — a rare showstopper in a bleak sale that experts said was rankled by economic uncertainty. Read more about bellwether artworks up for sale this week.
