What kind of oil-drunk capitalist pushes their chips onto ultra-prime real estate, tech moonshots and prestige sporting events while covering every surface in gold leaf?
The standard comparisons and analogies don’t quite capture President Trump’s particular economic vision. It is not really an extension of the Gilded Age robber barons, nor — despite his critics’ claims — is it akin to the fascist economic models of 1930s Germany or Italy.
There is another way of thinking about his brand of political economy, and a potential model for it. We might think of the autocratic, oil-rich states of the Persian Gulf. Specifically, we might think of Mr. Trump’s vision as an attempt to transplant the political economy of Saudi Arabia onto the United States.
The relationship between Mr. Trump, his family and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia runs deep. His hotel business dealings in the region have grown since his previous term in the Oval Office, and his ties to Saudi Arabia now extend to golf, a sport the kingdom has aggressively expanded into. One of its tournaments has been hosted by Mr. Trump’s signature course in Miami, and the president made time recently to assist in talks to broker a deal between LIV Golf, which is owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, and the PGA Tour.
Soon after the election, Mr. Trump attended an Ultimate Fighting Championship match in Madison Square Garden with Elon Musk, Joe Rogan and a lesser-known figure: Yasir al-Rumayyan, the head of the Saudi sovereign fund. The kingdom’s sovereign fund bankrolls both stable assets and high-risk prospects. This week, the U.F.C. chief executive, Dana White, a Trump ally, announced the start of a new boxing league in Saudi Arabia to make the sport “great again.”
Sure, one way to interpret this alliance is as purely transactional — a business executive cozying up to a rich country. But a closer look suggests that this is not merely about a series of real estate and entertainment deals.
Saudi Arabia’s economic power rests on its vast oil reserves, and Mr. Trump has embraced a parallel approach — championing “drill, baby, drill,” rolling back environmental restrictions and prioritizing energy expansion.
Last month, Mr. Trump shared on his social media platform an A.I.-generated video of the demolished Gaza Strip reborn as a “Trump Gaza” of casinos, poolside drinks and a massive idol of the developer-president-sovereign himself. That is the embodiment of the shared Gulf state dream: autocratic technocapitalism in glitz and glass.
For at least a decade, Saudi Arabia has sought to move beyond oil. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 plan aims to diversify the kingdom’s economy, imitating the economic models of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. In recent years, the Saudis have expanded into entertainment, luxury architecture and cutting-edge infrastructure, investing in desalination, green hydrogen and major tech ventures. Among those was a $3.5 billion investment in Uber and nearly $2 billion to help Elon Musk purchase Twitter. Most large-scale investments are funneled through the sovereign fund.
Mr. Trump’s own plans increasingly mirror this model. Some fear he could sell off federally owned lands to create a sovereign wealth fund. At a recent event in Miami for Saudi investors, he spoke about the interaction of artificial intelligence and energy consumption. “The world runs on low-cost energy, and energy-producing nations like us have nothing to apologize for,” he said.
In late January, Mr. Trump hosted Sam Altman and Larry Ellison in the White House for the announcement of the $500 billion Stargate infrastructure investment project. Joining them was Masayoshi Son of SoftBank, another major beneficiary of Saudi investment in recent years.
Saudi Arabia and its Emirati neighbors are the global bank where everyone eventually comes knocking, hat in hand.
The kingdom’s political model is also relevant. Mr. Trump raised eyebrows when he posted an image of himself wearing a crown, captioned “Long live the king.” Saudi Arabia’s centralized control mirrors the male-dominated family dynasty Mr. Trump has been cultivating within his own political empire.
His son Eric Trump oversees real estate and resorts, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner operates in adjacent financial spheres. Another son, Donald Trump Jr., serves as a roving scout for new political talent — what he calls a “MAGA bench for the future,” which brought him into contact with JD Vance — and new investments, most recently exploring ventures in Greenland.
The kingdom’s patriarchal governance also aligns with the social vision of Mr. Trump’s allies. The Saudi government enforces strict gender norms and a prohibition on pornography that seems to mirror the rhetoric and demands of the Project 2025 platform written in part by leading members of Mr. Trump’s administration. And Mr. Vance has advocated a rollback of rights for same-sex couples and transgender Americans. Saudi Arabia’s laws, far more extreme than Mr. Vance’s proposals, include strict bans on gender nonconformity and the potential use of the death penalty for homosexual relations.
The Trump administration’s growing hostility toward independent journalism — increasingly selecting allies for press access and triggering investigations into critics of the president — echoes Saudi Arabia’s own disregard for press freedom. The World Press Freedom index ranks the kingdom 166 out of 180 countries.
Still, Saudi Arabia is embraced by elites worldwide — not because of shared values, but because in a time of high interest rates, petro-states are among the few entities with surplus capital to invest.
Mr. Trump’s model of autocratic capitalism relies on the same logic. Like Saudi Arabia, the United States is an indispensable nation — whether for defense, energy or investment.
The Trumpist project is not about “Making America Great Again” in any traditional sense; rather, it is about reshaping America at least in part in the image of a modern petrostate — one that leverages energy wealth, luxury development and financial capital to exert influence on the global stage.
The future of this model of political economy is in flux. Saudi Arabia has begun work on flamboyant megaprojects like a golden cube in Riyadh large enough to hold the Empire State Building and a would-be city in the desert comprising two continuous 100-mile-long mirrored skyscrapers. But oil prices need to stay high for the kingdom’s checks to clear — and the costs are not only monetary. ITV reported that data suggest over 21,000 workers have died since Vision 2030 began in 2016. The shimmering sci-fi city of the promotional videos and prospectuses has so far yielded only a single unfinished seaside resort three times over budget, for a total cost of $4 billion. The techno kingdom’s future vision looks ever more like what The Wall Street Journal called a “dance of mutual delusion” with consultants and starchitects dazzling the monarch just enough to keep extending their contracts.
Mr. Trump’s “everything everywhere all at once” strategy of deregulation and extraction, combined with inflated promises and incoherent trade policy, suggests a similar sense that time is of the essence — and could work against him. Drill too much and oil prices start to fall. Act too erratically and global investors start to flee tech stocks that prop up the whole market. Partner with a chief executive who throws “Roman salutes” and people stop buying his cars. Treat tariffs like tweets and supply chains start to crack. Even the value of the $TRUMP cryptocurrency meme coin has fallen well over 80 percent since its launch just before the inauguration.
This week’s volatile stock markets, with “recession warnings blaring,” might be one of the sharper reminders about the autocratic technocapitalism model: Not all that glitters is gold.
The post Does Trump Want America to Look More Like Saudi Arabia? appeared first on New York Times.
