Trump's Big Week: Middle East Trip, China Deal, Pharma EO, "Big, Beautiful Bill" with Ben Shapiro

Trump’s Gulf trip marked a shift toward transactional foreign policy: economic deals first, political reform second. The administration announced a $600 billion Saudi commitment, nearly $142 billion in Saudi defense sales and major Qatar agreements, while the panel framed commerce as a tool for competing with China without intervention. (The White House)

Chamath disclosed a direct business stake in that shift: Groq was expanding Saudi AI-inference infrastructure at enormous scale. He said the company was building large data centers and had unique U.S. export permission; Groq had separately announced a $1.5 billion Saudi commitment earlier in 2025. (Groq)

Shapiro’s main Gulf warning was Qatar: engage it, but use American leverage rather than treating the relationship as unconditional. He pointed to Qatar’s relationship with Hamas and the U.S. air base, then called the proposed $400 million jet an avoidable corruption-optics problem because it was expected eventually to go to Trump’s presidential library. (Reuters)

The China tariff pause did not settle the trade argument; it moved the real fight into market access and regulatory barriers. U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods were temporarily cut sharply, while Friedberg argued success should be judged by whether American companies gain reciprocal access abroad, not by tariff revenue alone. (The White House)

Friedberg’s central domestic conclusion was that the Republican tax-and-spending bill did not meaningfully solve the deficit problem. He argued roughly $2.5 trillion annual deficits made DOGE-scale savings insufficient, and proposed two immediate rules: create no new programs and push existing discretionary programs back toward 2019 spending levels.

Chamath offered a different fiscal lever: monetize federal land, drilling rights, minerals and other public assets instead of relying only on austerity. The panel cited roughly 500 million federal acres and 3.2 billion acres of outer continental shelf, but Friedberg cautioned that lease and royalty revenue would arrive too slowly to erase near-term deficits.

Trump’s drug-pricing order created a tradeoff the panel thought politics was obscuring: lower U.S. prices could squeeze pharmaceutical R&D unless costs fall elsewhere. Chamath said China now rivals the U.S. in clinical-trial activity and trial expenses have exploded, while Shapiro warned reference pricing could shift costs or investment rather than eliminate them. (The White House)

The clearest healthcare target was the pharmacy-benefit-manager layer between manufacturers, insurers and pharmacies. Friedberg cited Caremark, Express Scripts and OptumRx, while the FTC found their affiliated pharmacies generated more than $7.3 billion above estimated acquisition costs on specialty generics from 2017–2022. (ftc.gov)