Masa Son is promising a massive investment in Trump’s America. Don’t hold your breath
CNN
Another day, another enigmatic billionaire turning up at Mar-a-Lago to pump up the Donald Trump brand as the president-elect prepares to return to the White House.
Another day, another enigmatic billionaire turning up at Mar-a-Lago to pump up the Donald Trump brand as the president-elect prepares to return to the White House. ICYMI: On Monday, Japanese investor Masayoshi Son joined Trump to announce a $100 billion investment in US projects over the next four years, with a goal of creating 100,000 new jobs in emerging technologies, including the development of artificial intelligence. (Because what investment in 2024 isn’t tied to AI?) The planned investment will come from Son’s SoftBank Group, which, despite its name, is not a bank — more of a sprawling global tech investing company. This is hardly the first time a president has sought to gin up economic goodwill through agreements with companies on the promise of reviving American industry. But, as Trump knows well from his first term, these sorts of arrangements are often heavy on fanfare but light on actual value. In perhaps the most famous example, Trump and Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn in 2017 announced plans to build a $10 billion electronics factory in Wisconsin and create 13,000 new jobs. But the company eventually abandoned most of its plans for the facility and the high-tech products it was set to build. In 2021, Foxconn said it would invest just $672 million in a revised deal that would create fewer than 1,500 jobs. Foxconn has said that it invested $1 billion into the state, and it still has a major manufacturing site for data servers with more than 1,000 employees. But the facility Trump once touted as the center of the rebirth of American manufacturing has instead become the site of a future Microsoft data hub that aims to train employees and manufacturers to use AI. This isn’t SoftBank’s first rodeo, either. Before Trump began his first term, the Japanese conglomerate committed to a $50 billion investment with grand promises of creating 50,000 new jobs. Included in that investment: a satellite startup called OneWeb, which at the time was seen as a competitor to Elon Musk’s Starlink.
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