Saudi Arabia won’t exist without US support: Trump

Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks with reporters after arriving at the Iowa State Fair on August 15, 2015 in Des Moines, Iowa. (AFP photo)

Front-runner Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump says Saudi Arabia will not exist without the American support.

In an interview with NBC News on Sunday, Trump said Saudis are making “a billion dollars a day” because of the US assistance and called on Riyadh to share its vast wealth with Washington in exchange for the American favors.

“Saudi Arabia, if it weren’t for us, they wouldn’t be here,” Trump said. “They wouldn’t exist.”

“They should pay us,” he added. “Like it or don’t like it, people have backed Saudi Arabia. What I really mind though is we back it at tremendous expense. We get nothing for it.”

Trump suggested that the United States should consider ditching Riyadh because Washington is increasingly getting less dependent on the Saudi Arabian oil.

“The primary reason we are with Saudi Arabia is because we need the oil,” he said. “Now, we don’t need the oil so much.”

“And, if we let our people really go, we wouldn’t need the oil at all,” Trump said of US energy industry. “And we could let everybody else fight it out.”

“Look, Saudi Arabia is going to be in big trouble pretty soon,” the business predicted. “And they’re going to need help.”

The booming US shale oil industry came under threat after Saudi Arabia convinced fellow members from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to maintain current oil output, plunging crude oil prices to four-year low in an oversupplied market.

The high-cost of producing and extracting liquid oil from shale oil deposits has become uneconomic following a sharp drop in oil prices after OPEC’s decision not to cut oil production, according to experts.

It seems Trump wants the US government to demand Riyadh cut its oil production in order to push oil prices go up again. This process would ease the way for the American energy industry to extract liquid oil from shale oil deposits, but would also make Saudi Arabia almost irrelevant to the United States.


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