Let’s turn to the Middle East and relations with the United States. The Saudi crown prince faces a tricky balancing act of prioritizing domestic growth with foreign relations. That says President Trump has taken Mohammed bin Salman’s offer of investing $600 billion in the US and pushed it 4 trillion. Trump has also asked for opec+ to lower crude prices, which again would hamper the kingdom’s ambitions. For more, we’re joined by Karin Young, a senior research scholar at Columbia University, joining us from Washington. Karen, thanks so much for being with us today on the show. So I think it’s interesting, a lot of reporting about how the relationship between Trump and NBC this time around is quite different than what we saw the first time around. How would you assess it right now, just about a week into the Trump presidency? Well, thank you, Jennifer. I would say that, you know, first of all, Saudi Arabia is a different country than it was in the Trump first administration. It’s been four years of really more of a laser focus on this domestic growth agenda, solving the dispute between the GCC states and really focusing more on, you know, calming relations in conflict in the region, particularly vis a vis Iran rather than starting up problems. They also know how to deal with Donald Trump. They know that commitments like this of increasing investment are going to be music to his ears, that he’s quite transactional in his view of the region and particularly of the kingdom. And so I think this is going to be a more articulate Saudi Arabia and a foreign policy, at least from the Saudi side, that will be able to play to the the the desires of what they expect from Trump. How do they balance that, though, Karen, with their own desires and ambitions domestically? Well, I mean, all of this kind of rhetoric of, you know, increasing potential conflict in the region and seeing, you know, the use of industrial policy and tariff policy is very worrying, especially across emerging markets, as that will have an effect on on oil demand. But it’s also, you know, this is going to be another period of unpredictability. So you have to manage those ups and downs. And the kingdom doesn’t want to see that. They want to see, you know, as much calm as possible in the region. They want to see a good relationship with the United States and they want to go towards those objectives that they’ve been seeking, even within the Biden administration, which were some sort of defense pact or security guarantee. They want to move forward with their civilian nuclear program and they want to have some sort of technology partnership agreement with the United States. So getting the things that the kingdom wants for its own domestic agenda will be front and center. And doing that doesn’t work if we see really upheaval and ups and downs or depression in oil markets or we see this kind of not sure where the Trump administration is going to go, especially vis a vis sanctions or maximum pressure campaign on Iran. So they need information and they need some kind of predictability. And the way to do that, which they learned the first time, is through an information flow. And the best way to get information flow with the Trump administration is directed the top. Do you see this $1 trillion rounding number from Trump as just a negotiating tactic? I mean, I wonder, too, from the perspective of the Saudis, how you think they view it. Well, first of all, the number is completely unrealistic. I mean, if we look at, you know, kind of FDI stock from Saudi Arabia into the United States, it’s hovering around $10 billion. Right. So we’re not even on the scale of of investment. Now, there’s lots of ways to look at that financial relationship. There’s traditional FDI thinking about a greenfield, FDI building, manufacturing facilities, things like that. There’s also holdings of the public investment fund in, you know, publicly traded stocks in the United States. That’s about $26 billion. And then there’s reserve assets of some of the Saudi central bank in U.S. Treasuries, which is about 140, $450 billion. So still, we’re nowhere near 600 or getting close to a trillion. That would be like the entire picture, plus more being invested only in the United States, which it’s not. So, you know, where does this money come from? It’ll also be trade agreements. And, you know, the big ticket items that Trump has liked before have been military sales, defense purchases. But, you know, the whole kind of package of foreign military sales that go through the State Department in 2024 to every country. Only about $4 billion. Now, of course, there you know, other countries can buy privately from U.S. defense manufacturers. But, you know, we are not getting into that range of numbers across all of those kinds of allocations. So what we might see then is just promises, right? Promises of defense purchases over and service contracts over a long period of time, you know, to three decades even. I think a big ticket item where Saudi Arabia would be very happy to partner and invest in the United States would be on a civilian nuclear program. And that’s probably a wedge into negotiation with the Trump administration to kind of open the door on a dollar term and then get to the materials and the the trade items that are most important to the kingdom.