A handful of Gulf countries are among the biggest beneficiaries of the endangered US export subsidy program, an Al-Monitor analysis reveals.

Companies from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates together pulled in about $12 billion in trade financing over the past five years — 8.5% of the $141 billion global total — to help pay for nuclear reactors, industrial power generators and new fleets of Boeing jets. That includes a record-setting $5 billion loan to help Saudi Arabia build one of the world's largest petrochemical complexes.

Highlighting the region’s importance, the Export-Import Bank of the United States and the government of Dubai signed a nonbinding agreement in 2013 to explore ways the bank could offer up to $5 billion in trade financing for megaprojects. Potential areas of cooperation were said to include air-traffic control and airport infrastructure; railway, urban metro and port-development projects; power generation; oil, gas and petrochemical projects and water-treatment projects.

The Memorandum of Understanding “underscores our continued cooperation with our partners in Dubai and helps ensure that American exporters are not disadvantaged by foreign companies relying upon state-driven capital,” bank Chairman Fred Hochberg said at the time. “The more orders American exporters fill in Dubai, the more American jobs we can support.”