By Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Bahrain’s crown prince is set to announce plans to invest more than $17 billion in the United States during a meeting with President Donald Trump on Wednesday, a White House official said.
As part of the investment, Bahrain is expected to sign a deal between Gulf Air and Boeing/GE valued at around $7 billion for 12 aircraft with an option for six more, the official said.
The deal also includes the sale of 40 GE engines, the official said.
The announcement from Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa comes on the heels of foreign investment deals Trump made during a trip to the Middle East in May.
During a visit to Riyadh, Trump secured a $600 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia to invest in the United States and agreed to sell the Saudis an arms package worth nearly $142 billion.
The White House official said the Bahrain deal will support 30,000 American jobs and was secured with help from Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
The crown prince will also commit to deploy additional capital in excess of billions of dollars.
Bahrain is expected to be signing deals with Oracle and Cisco, with plans to replace Chinese servers with Cisco products, the official said.
Bahrain also seeks to increase its investments in U.S. energy, tech and manufacturing sectors.
The official said the crown prince intends to deploy capital to increase U.S. domestic aluminum production, invest in U.S. LNG production to secure BAH energy supplies and purchase cutting edge AI chips partnering with U.S. hyper-scalers.
During the visit, the crown prince will announce the kingdom’s intention to make these investments and sign various deals and memoranda of understanding.
One of these MOUs creates a framework for Bahrain to begin discussions towards developing commercial nuclear capabilities, the official said.
Later this year, the king of Bahrain will visit Washington to finalize these agreements and solidify the progress made in building our two nation’s economic prosperity, the official said.
(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
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