CGTN Europe interviewed Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, Director, European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE)
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Well, let's talk now to Hosok Lee-Makiyama, who's director at the European Center for International Political Economy.
00:05Welcome back to the program, Hosok. Good to see you.
00:08So, Donald Trump saying $10 trillion worth of deals are signed on this tour.
00:13Do you think it will be considered a success by him?
00:16Will there be more investment in America, more American jobs?
00:22The first question is whether the White House actually measures success in number of jobs created or number of headlines.
00:28But either way, I think it's fair to say that we see $1.4 trillion, at least, in various memorandums of understanding and letter of intent,
00:38which signals perhaps how Middle East-U.S. relations have returned to its norm,
00:44which has always been based on transactional diplomacy between heads of states and the monarchs.
00:50So, yeah, I think either way it will be sold as a huge success, as we already heard.
00:56Well, let's talk about this AI deal, said to be worth $200 billion and a potential change to restrictions on exports of NVIDIA chips surrounding this.
01:09How might it work? Is it a big deal?
01:12Well, it is a big deal, and not least because AI and data centers have been one source of diversification that all Gulf countries have been engaged in.
01:24And, in fact, UAE is also on the staging ground now, thanks to cheap access to energy and open investment climate.
01:32And what we have seen perhaps is a sign that Trump might offer export waivers to those data centers in UAE that will allow U.S. audits
01:46and who are primarily facing U.S. clients and in order to avoid leakage of chipsets from NVIDIA to, let's say, Iran or China.
01:57You talked about the transactional nature of this relationship between the U.S. and these Gulf countries.
02:05We also saw some aviation deals, defense deals.
02:08Are we seeing something more of a strategic partnership that goes beyond business?
02:14Well, that strategic partnership has always been the case ever since these Gulf countries were created after the war.
02:20I mean, there has been an interoperability locking of sorts that have been going on for decades.
02:25If you look at it, most Gulf countries are lying on F-15s as multi-role fighters, Patriot missiles and Apache helicopters and M1A1 rifles.
02:35So, in other words, Gulf states are already deeply entrenched within the U.S. systems.
02:40And I think this pipeline in terms of defense contract will go on for another few decades.
02:49And this is also a good life insurance for these countries.
02:53So, President Trump will be getting some positive headlines perhaps, some American jobs perhaps.
02:58But what about the other countries, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar?
03:02What do they get out of it?
03:03Is this about looking ahead towards a future after oil?
03:07Yes, indeed.
03:10All of these countries have been looking at the post-oil imperative.
03:15Saudi Arabia famous has its Vision 2030 document.
03:19And also, UAE has its AI strategy.
03:24And it's actually the first country in the world to have a minister for AI.
03:28And we have seen Gulf sovereign funds converting their hydrocarbon resurpluses into basically tech equities,
03:35stocks in the big tech.
03:37And also, in terms of energy, they're transitioning to a combination of solar energy and hydrogen in order to sustain these green data centers
03:47that will basically fuel the new language models that are created by the United States and other countries potentially.
03:55Great to talk to you.
03:57Thanks for coming on the program.
03:58That's Hosok Lee-Makiyama from the Center for International Political Economy.