I’m sure you’ve all seen by now that Trump announced that a Japanese company called Softbank has agreed to invest $50 billion in the US that could mean 50,000 new jobs:
Masa (SoftBank) of Japan has agreed to invest $50 billion in the U.S. toward businesses and 50,000 new jobs….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2016
Masa said he would never do this had we (Trump) not won the election!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2016
It was reported that this was actually announced in October, but it really wasn’t. The announcement in October was a larger global investment of $100 million and didn’t specify the US.
But Allahpundit reported something very interesting about this announcement that you should all read:
Is it true, as Trump claims, that SoftBank wouldn’t have done this if Hillary had won the election? Quite possibly, yeah. SoftBank owns 80 percent of Sprint; they’ve been trying to acquire T-Mobile for years now. But they ran into trouble with the Obama administration on antitrust grounds, as reducing the number of major U.S. carriers from four to three (AT&T, Verizon, and the Sprint/T-Mobile hybrid) would have further hurt competition in the industry. Obama’s FCC and DOJ blocked the deal and SoftBank gave up on the merger in 2014. But the company’s interest didn’t fade and Son kept his eye on the election, knowing that a Republican victory would make for a very different antitrust environment. Trump delivered on November 8th so now Son’s delivering for him with a much bigger political win than the Carrier deal: 50,000 jobs and $50 billion in investments — if the Sprint/T-Mobile deal is approved, of course. I have a feeling that the Sprint/T-Mobile deal will be approved.
So it looks like Trump’s winning charm isn’t the reason this deal is happening.
Wow. There’s always a backroom deal isn’t there?