Almost every month, there's another announcement about how various Gulf states will spend mind-blowing sums of money — hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions — in deals made with the new Trump administration in the US.

In January, Saudi Arabia said it would broaden investments into, and trade with, the US to over $600 billion (€530 billion) in the next four years. US President Donald Trump himself then suggested that the sum could be as high as $1 trillion (€884 billion). And recent reports suggest the US will soon offer Saudi Arabia an arms package worth over $100 billion.

Not to be outdone, the United Arab Emirates followed up with announcements in March that they'd be spending more than $1.4 trillion in the US over the next 10 years. Analysts say the pledge, which will focus on artificial intelligence, energy, semiconductors and manufacturing, is one of the largest foreign investment commitments in US history.

Trump is expected to visit the Gulf states — Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar — in mid-May when all those deals will be discussed further.

But there's a problem with what is being described as a kind of grand "investment diplomacy" by the Gulf states: falling oil prices.

Lower oil prices present a challenge to Middle Eastern nations who depend on oil for their national income. Although many oil-producing nations have been trying to diversify their national income away from hydrocarbons and into areas like tourism, financial services and technology, they're all still heavily dependent on them.

"There have been very impressive [Saudi] reforms in the last decade," said Tim Callen, a visiting fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington and expert on Gulf states' economies. "But oil is still the heartbeat of the economy so when oil goes lower, it creates an environment that is not as favorable as when they are........

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