President Donald Trump secured $2 trillion worth of deals with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE during his trip to the Middle East last week in what some have argued is a move to counter China’s influence in the region.
While China has increasingly bolstered its commercial ties with top Middle Eastern nations who have remained steadfast in their refusal to pick sides amid growing geopolitical tension between Washington and Beijing, Trump may have taken steps to give the U.S. an edge over its chief competitor.
But concern has mounted after Trump reversed a Biden-era policy – which banned the sale of AI-capable chips to the UAE and Saudi Arabia – that highly coveted U.S. technologies could potentially fall into the hands of Chinese companies, and in extension, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
China hawks on both sides of the aisle noted their concern after Trump entered into an agreement with the UAE to build the largest artificial intelligence hub outside the United States, coupled with the tens of billions of dollars’ worth of deals U.S. companies like Nvidia, ChatGPT, Google, Amazon and Qualcomm entered into with state-backed Saudi AI ventures, including direct chip sales.
“This deal could very well be dangerous because we have no clarity on how the Saudis and Emiratis will prevent the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese government, the Chinese manufacturing establishment from getting their hands on these chips,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor last week.
“Inevitably, when foreign countries end up with American-made chips, the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, sooner or later gets ahold of these American chips and their secrets in them,” he said. “That’s why we’ve had such strong restrictions against exporting these chips to other counties.”
Similarly, following the announced deals, Republican chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., took to X to say, “The CCP is actively seeking indirect access to our top tech. Deals like this require scrutiny and verifiable guardrails.
“We raised concerns about G42 last year for this very reason—and we need safeguards in place before more agreements move forward,” he added in reference to an Emirati AI development holding company.
