Is Trump Pivoting in his Middle East Policy? New $142 Billion Arms Deal to Saudi Arabia Announced

President Donald Trump visited Saudi Arabia today, May 13, 2025, and made several agreements with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Image source.

by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

President Donald Trump and his entourage arrived in Saudi Arabia today for an economic summit that included many American CEOs, such as Elon Musk, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, IBM’s Arvind Krishna, Citicorp’s Jane Fraser, Boeing’s Kelly Ortberg, NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang, Palantir’s Alex Karp and BlackRock’s Larry Fink.

As a precondition to letting Trump and these American CEOs attend this conference, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made it clear that any discussion about normalizing relationships between Saudi Arabia and Israel, was OFF LIMITS.

It looks like the Abraham Accords proposal is now dead in the water.

Trump seemingly obliged to these conditions, and did not even include Israel on this trip. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was scheduled to visit Israel just before this trip, but ended up canceling it at the last minute.

There are a lot of issues and news stories resulting from this trip, but to me, the biggest news story is that Trump has reportedly agreed to sell Saudi Arabia an arms package worth $142 billion, “the largest defense cooperation agreement in history.”

By comparison, Trump approved military sales to Israel last month amounting to $12 billion. (Source.)

Time reports:

Trump Announces $142 Billion Arms Deal with Saudi Arabia

The U.S. has agreed to sell Saudi Arabia an arms package worth nearly $142 billion, the White House announced Tuesday, as President Donald Trump kicked off his Middle East trip in Riyadh.

Described by the Trump administration as “the largest defense cooperation agreement” in history, the package includes deals with more than a dozen American defense companies in sectors including air and missile defense.

“The deals celebrated today are historic and transformative for both countries and represent a new golden era of partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia,” the White House said in a statement. (Full article.)

Wow! That takes military spending to a whole new level! And I thought Trump’s tariffs were going to fund tax cuts for Americans?!

So does this mean the U.S. is abandoning Israel now?

I hardly think so. It does look like there is going to be a regime change, however, as Netanyahu is quickly losing support both in Israel, and abroad, as French President Emmanuel Macron today came out and said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy regarding humanitarian aid to Gaza is “shameful”, and that Europeans should consider increasing sanctions. (Source.)

But there is no way that Trump is going to abandon the Zionist agenda, as it is what helped get him (s)elected.

Catherine Austin Fitts was just interviewed by Jimmy Dore this week, who asked Fitts about Trump snubbing Netanyahu.

Fitts says:

“I want to see three things from a President who’s really serious about this.

First, he makes AIPAC register as a foreign lobby.

Second, he requires disclosure by any government official or member of Congress as to whether they have dual citizenship in any other country, Israel included.

Third, we stop funding the genocide in Gaza.”

I fully agree. Here is the interview:

Here are some other headline news stories that I posted on our Telegram Channel today.

Defeat by Houthis Reveals ‘US Military Decline’

From the English Russian news site, Sputnik:

The humiliation the US suffered at the hands of the Houthis was the product of the United States military’s own arrogance, former Pentagon analyst Ret. Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski tells Sputnik.

Kwiatkowski compared the US anti-Houthi campaign to the American War for Independence, where the “arrogant” British military grossly overestimated their opponent, “a smaller, tougher, more creative set of people.”

The US military decline, she posits, has been going on for decades but was so far easy to hide because the US never fought serious enemies.

As such, there are three lessons Russia, Iran and China can derive from the US misadventures:

Do not engage in proxy wars

Be aware that people fighting for their land will fight harder and smarter than “a visiting professional army”

If you have to fight people who fight for their lives and their way of life, prepare to be ruthless and to emulate their tactics and strategies

Donald Trump’s attempt to sell the US withdrawal from the anti-Houthi campaign as a success does not seem militarily credible, though the material losses the US suffered in the form of lost aircraft and downed Reaper drones are a “good reason to regroup.” (Source.)

Why aren’t Americans filling the manufacturing jobs we already have?

NPR is the first source I have seen to ask this question about Trump’s tariffs and his desire to bring manufacturing back to America.

Where is the labor going to come from? There are already manufacturing jobs available that are not being filled, especially since Trump came to office and started deporting migrant labor.

NPR reports:

President Trump has been upending the global economy in the name of bringing manufacturing back. President Joe Biden signed into law massive investments aimed at doing something similar. The American manufacturing sector is reviving after decades of decay.

But there’s something a bit weird undercutting this movement to reshore factory jobs: American manufacturers say they are struggling to fill the jobs they already have.

According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are nearly half a million open manufacturing jobs right now.

Last year, the Manufacturing Institute, a non-profit aimed at developing America’s manufacturing workforce, and Deloitte, a consultancy firm, surveyed more than 200 manufacturing companies. More than 65% percent of the firms said recruiting and retaining workers was their number one business challenge. (Source.)

And remember last year on the campaign trail, when Trump and JD Vance attacked Haitians living in Springfield, Ohio, claiming they were eating people’s pets?

Who, besides the Haitians themselves, suffered from this campaign rhetoric?

American businesses.

From the New York Times:

An Ohio Businessman Faces Death Threats for Praising His Haitian Workers

The lifelong Republican employs fewer Haitians than others in Springfield, but his life has been upended since Donald J. Trump spread falsehoods about immigrants in his hometown.

Excerpts:

For Jamie McGregor, a businessman in Springfield, Ohio, speaking favorably about the Haitian immigrants he employs has come to this: death threats, a lockdown at his company and posters around town branding him a traitor for hiring immigrants.

To defend himself and his family, Mr. McGregor has had to violate his own vow to never own a gun.

“I have struggled with the fact that now we’re going to have firearms in our house — like, what the hell?” said Mr. McGregor, who runs McGregor Metal, which makes parts for cars, trucks and tractors.

“And now we’re taking classes, we’re going to shooting ranges, we’re being fitted for handguns,” he said on a recent day, pulling up a photo of his 14-year-old daughter clutching a Glock.

A fifth-generation resident in the small city between Columbus and Dayton, Mr. McGregor was struggling a few years ago to fill positions for machine operators, forklift drivers and quality inspectors, Mr. McGregor, 48, began hiring Haitians who had recently settled in Springfield. They now represent about 10 percent of McGregor Metal’s labor force of 330.

But he has suddenly found himself in the middle of a political firestorm. Former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, denounced the Haitians in Springfield with false claims that they were stealing and eating pets.

A flood of threats was directed not only at him, but his family and his business.

“The owner of McGregor Metal can take a bullet to the skull and that would be 100 percent justified,” said one message left on the company voice mail.

“Why are you importing Third World savages who eat animals and giving them jobs over United States citizens?” another asked.

Mr. McGregor’s children and his 80-year-old mother began receiving hateful calls.

“We’re being hunted like animals,” Mr. McGregor’s wife, Cameron, said.

Mr. McGregor said he had spoken out hoping to show that the Haitian workers had helped his company grow.

He said the newcomers have helped revitalize the blue-collar town and reverse its population decline. (Source.)

Trump Being Sued in Little Known U.S. Court of International Trade Over Tariffs

From CNBC:

A little-known federal court is set to hear arguments Tuesday in a case challenging President Donald Trump’s tariffs, putting a key plank of his economic agenda under the legal microscope for the first time.

A panel of three judges at the U.S. Court of International Trade will consider whether Trump exceeded his power when he enacted steep tariffs on more than 180 countries and territories last month.

If they side with the plaintiffs, the judges could sharply rein in Trump’s ability to unilaterally impose import taxes, one of his preferred methods of flexing executive power.

The lawsuit was filed in mid-April by five domestic businesses that say they rely on imported goods not reasonably available to them in the U.S.

Their legal complaint argues that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — the 1977 law Trump invoked in early April to impose his worldwide “reciprocal” tariffs — does not actually give the president the power to issue those sweeping duties.

The law gives the president a range of economic powers in a national emergency, including to regulate or ban imports, though it does not explicitly mention tariffs, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

The “national emergency” Trump declared to justify his use of that law, known as IEEPA, is “a figment of his own imagination,” the plaintiffs argue.

“Trade deficits, which have persisted for decades without causing economic harm, are not an emergency,” their complaint says.

The Liberty Justice Center, the libertarian nonprofit representing the plaintiffs, notes in the suit that the U.S. Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to levy and collect taxes. (Source.)