Visit a boost to Saudi-US ties

RIYADH: US President Barack Obama's visit to the Kingdom is a major boost to Saudi-US relations as well as to America’s ties with the GCC countries.

Following Obama’s talks with Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman on Wednesday, Obama is slated to have high-level talks with GCC leaders in Riyadh on Thursday.
The US and Saudi Arabia share over 80 years of collaboration based on mutual respect, values and goals. The US has the highest share of FDI stock in Saudi Arabia, while the Kingdom is the world’s largest producer of oil and desalinated water and home to the world’s largest industrial complex and metro infrastructure.
The Saudi-US commercial relationship can be traced back to the birth of the Kingdom’s oil industry in 1933 when Standard Oil of California (now Chevron) won a concession to explore for oil in eastern Saudi Arabia. Since that time, business relationship between the two countries has grown and expanded far beyond oil and gas.
In the last 10 years, Saudi-US trade rose from $26 billion to $74 billion. Saudi Arabia today is America’s 12th largest trading partner while the US is the second largest trading partner of Saudi Arabia.
US exports to the Kingdom include automobiles, trucks/buses, industrial machinery, construction/building equipment, civil aircraft, defense systems, IT and health care products.
The Kingdom also is a significant investor in the US. According to figures from the US Department of Commerce, the total stock of FDI in the United States from Saudi Arabia was $13.3 billion in 2014.
The bilateral relationship is much more than an exchange of products and services. Saudi Arabia sends more university students to the United States than it does to any other country in the world.
In 2015, Saudi students studying in the US numbered more than 125,000. These students are the foundation of the next generation of Saudi business and government leaders. The personal and professional ties they are developing now and their affinity forAmerican culture will drive the commercial relationship forward and to greater heights for years to come.
Saudi exports aim to grow domestic trade by enhancing SME export readiness, promoting new export opportunities, advancing ecosystem efficiency and international market access.
President of the Council of Saudi Chambers Abdulrahman Al-Zamil recently said: “Elite businessmen in Saudi Arabia are committed to build economic and trade relations between the two countries since the United States is an important trade partner of the Kingdom.”
He added that the two countries are linked by a number of economic agreements in the field of support, promotion and protection of investments, noting the importance of exchange of meetings between the business sectors of the two countries and the discovery of fields and opportunities to boost trade ties.
The Fourth Saudi-US Business Opportunities Forum was held in Riyadh in March. The three previous meetings were held in the United States.
“This is the first time we have held this meeting here in the Kingdom, which also portrays the strong trade bonds between the two countries and also because the Kingdom has become an attractive investment destination,” Commerce and Industry Minister Tawfiq Al-Rabiah said.
He described US-Saudi relations as the most powerful political and business alliance, which is the longest-lasting relationship in the world, tracing its roots back to the American company’s oil discovery when Standard Oil Company of California was established in the Kingdom in 1933, during the reign of the Kingdom's founder King Abdulaziz, who met the late US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945.
He said the fourth forum aimed to carry the two nations’ longtime strategic partnership well into the 21st century by deepening mutual relations, building new alliances and partnerships, and opening up new, as-yet-unexplored scopes for cooperation, all of which are set to reinforce the Saudi economy’s ongoing transformation and contribute to its diversification and prosperity.
The two nations are fully committed to taking their relationship to the next level by shifting its basis toward creating more jobs in both countries, and greater cooperation in various economic and business fields. These will be in areas that concern technological cooperation, the training of manpower and reciprocal investments given the unrivaled competitiveness of the US corporate community in various fields including biotechnology; health care services and their management; information technology; transportation; conventional and alternative energy; and automotive manufacturing.