President Donald Trump is now in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It’s the first stop on a four-day trip to the Gulf, with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates also on the itinerary.

Among agenda items is solidifying business deals with some of the world’s richest countries. Sameer Hashmi is Middle East business correspondent for our editorial partners at the BBC. He spoke from Riyadh with “Marketplace Morning Report” host Sabri Ben-Achour. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Sabri Ben-Achour: So this is a little less of a geopolitical visit and more about investment deals. How significant would you say this trip is?

Sameer Hashmi: It's quite significant, if you look at the context of this visit, because this is President Trump's first major foreign trip since he's returned to office. Now, it's about investment deals, as you said. In January, Saudi Arabia announced that they would be investing $600 billion in the U.S. economy over the next four years; President Trump wants more. In addition to that, in March, the United Arab Emirates announced that they would be investing $1.4 trillion [in the U.S.] over the next 10 years.

Ben-Achour: What kinds of investments? What industries are we talking about here?

Hashmi: So military defense deals will be on top of the economic agenda. I mean, there are reports that President Trump will offer the Saudis a deal, which would be close to or over $100 billion. Interestingly, even during his first trip, President Trump had offered a deal — a defense deal — of over $100 billion to the Saudis, but only $20 billion could go through, because in 2018, after the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a lot of these deals came under scrutiny in the Congress. And then in 2021, there was a ban. That was lifted two years ago, but that hasn't seen much progress.

So I think one of the things that the Saudis are also looking for is, that apart from signing these deals, they want an assurance from President Trump that this time these deals would go through. And the second would be AI. During the Biden administration, they had placed restrictions on the export of critical AI chips. Now these countries — the UAE and Saudi Arabia — they're investing billions of dollars in different sectors because they're trying to diversify their economy away from oil. So what they're hoping is that President Trump will relax some of those restrictions and announce some sort of a deal, which would give them easy access to those semiconductors and AI chips.

Ben-Achour: Ultimately, you know, besides immediate investments and sales here and there, what are President Trump and the Gulf States looking to get out of this trip, big picture?

Hashmi: For President Trump, it's very clear: He wants these big investment deals because this would be a win for President Trump, because he can indicate back home that his America First agenda is working. For the Saudis and other Gulf states, they are looking at really reviving and strengthening ties with the United States, because during the Biden administration, ties between Saudi Arabia and the United States had frayed, so they're really looking to revive those. And also, Saudis are looking for investments from American firms.