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Qatar Airways to Buy 160 Boeing Jets

Qatar Airways announced Wednesday that it planned to buy 160 Boeing jets, the latest deal signed during President Trump’s four-day visit to the Arabian Peninsula.

“It’s the largest order of jets in the history of Boeing,” Mr. Trump said.

Boeing wide-body jets typically sell for between $300 million and $440 million.

The United States and Qatar also signed a statement of defense cooperation. No additional details, such as the text of the documents, were released immediately.

Mr. Trump and Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the emir of Qatar, watched as their defense ministers and the chiefs of Boeing and Qatar Airways signed the agreements.

“After signing these documents, we are going to another level of relationship,” the Qatari leader said.

Mr. Trump received a hero’s welcome in Doha, Qatar’s capital. The Qataris rolled out a literal red carpet for the president, who pumped his fist before walking down the steps of Air Force One, where Sheikh al-Thani greeted him.

During a welcoming ceremony, men dressed in traditional white robes accompanied the president’s motorcade on Arabian horses and camels.

“We have the best equipment anywhere in the world,” Mr. Trump said. “You’re buying a lot of that equipment, actually.”

The deals signed Wednesday did not include a controversial plan for the Qataris to donate a $400 million luxury jet for Mr. Trump to use as a new Air Force One. Mr. Trump has argued Air Force One is too old and that it compares unfavorably while sitting next to the jets of Arab nations at international airports. But the gift has raised ethical concerns, and Qatar has said it is still under review.

The purchase of the Boeing planes announced in Doha followed a similar announcement of deals made while Mr. Trump was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The White House on Tuesday said the president had secured $600 billion in deals with the Saudi government and firms. But the details provided were vague, and some of the deals announced as new had already been in the works.

Organizers of the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum, where the deals were announced, said that 145 deals were signed, totaling more than $300 billion, just half of the total promoted on Tuesday by the White House.

A Trump administration news release describing around $283 billion in deals said those were “just a few of the many transformative deals secured in Saudi Arabia.” White House officials said more deals would come.

The biggest deal announced in Saudi Arabia was a nearly $142 billion agreement for over a dozen American defense industry companies to provide the kingdom with state-of-the-art warfighting equipment and service.

The White House also trumpeted a commitment from the Saudi company DataVolt to move forward with plans to invest $20 billion in artificial intelligence data centers and energy infrastructure in the United States.

It also promoted more than $2 billion in work that American firms were performing on Saudi infrastructure projects, among them King Salman International Airport, King Salman Park and Qiddiya City, a massive entertainment complex. Several of those projects were already underway.

The construction company Jacobs announced its involvement in the new Saudi airport project last August. AECOM, another construction and infrastructure firm, likewise, had already won a contract to provide design and project management services for the Qiddiya City project.

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