At a rally in Mississippi earlier this week, President Trump bragged about putting his foot down with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and demanding more military spending, following accusations that he and other OPEC nations are “ripping off the rest of the world.”
Trump told the rally “I love the king, King Salman. But I said King – we’re protecting you – you might not be there for two weeks without us – you have to pay for your military.” Trump did not indicate when you said this.
This led to a response from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who says that the US armaments Saudi Arabia has were not free, and that the Saudis “bought everything with money.”
Indeed, Saudi Arabia has been among the world’s leaders in military spending in recent years, reflecting massive expenditures on their war in Yemen, and continued purchases of huge amounts of US arms.
Most scandals surrounding Saudi military spending are not that they’re spending too little, but that they’re buying so much deadly armament and killing so many civilians in neighboring Yemen. This has put US arms sales to the Saudis under growing scrutiny.
In terms of the percentage of GDP for military expenses Saudi Arabia with about 10% is the second highest in the world. Only Oman with about 13% is tops. Trump does not know these numbers.
Trump just talks and goes by his intuition and feelings He doesn’t have a lot of time for reading . I think Israel spends more like 16 % that would be higher per- capta spending . Trump does have good intuition some thing our last 4 presidents were short of .
My numbers are not based on the per capita GDP but on total GDP. Th per capita GDP is also an excellent standard as it relates to family wealth and income. Thanks!
Allied Authoritarians of the world, keep bite each other’s backs and insisting the relationship is on the rocks like this, we all just might have a future worth living in after all.
The Saudis can turn around and say, your Dollar won’t last two weeks without our petroleum-dollar disconnect.