Trump’s ties to international business could turn out an asset that no other President has been ever dreamed of being able to employ. The worries of another mortgage crisis or big business bailout could be marginalized, even totally countered by the faith and capital that Trump is engendering from economies around the world. Its almost like he’s building a wall around America of economic security that will protect us from our own economy’s possible problems…
NYTimes.com — The Japanese business mogul Masayoshi Son pledged to President-elect Donald J. Trump nearly two weeks ago that he would invest in the United States and create about 50,000 jobs.
On Monday, Mr. Son’s conglomerate, SoftBank, took what it described as the first step in fulfilling that commitment.
By leading a $1.2 billion investment in OneWeb, which makes satellites for internet access, SoftBank said it was continuing to invest in new technology and supporting job creation in the United States. In their announcement, SoftBank and OneWeb said the investment would create nearly 3,000 jobs in the United States over four years.
“Earlier this month, I met with President-elect Trump and shared my commitment to investing and creating jobs in the U.S.,” Mr. Son said in a statement. “America has always been at the forefront of innovation and technological development, and we are thrilled to be playing a part in continuing to drive that growth as we work to create a truly globally connected ecosystem.”
Mr. Son, whose technology and telecommunications empire has made him one of Japan’s wealthiest men, has positioned himself as a prospective partner of the coming Trump administration by promising to help spur job growth.
At a meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan this month, Mr. Son pledged to invest $50 billion in the United States, which, by his reckoning, would create about 50,000 jobs. Mr. Trump has cited the pledge as a sign that he could persuade the private sector to lead improvements in the national economy.
Much of the promised investment, however, would come from a previously announced $100 billion investment fund that SoftBank will lead, called the SoftBank Vision Fund in which the conglomerate has joined Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and others.
The OneWeb investment does not come from the Vision fund, a spokesman for SoftBank said. Instead it will come directly from SoftBank, as yet another investment in technology it views as potentially disruptive. (SoftBank is providing $1 billion of the investment, while the rest is coming from OneWeb investors.)
During its history, SoftBank has struck deals for stakes in companies including the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, the online lender SoFi and the Chinese ride-hailing start-up Didi Chuxing.
The new deal will give SoftBank and its partners nearly half of OneWeb, a four-year-old start-up based in Arlington, Va., that aims to beam internet access to unconnected areas of the world through satellites it intends to launch. Greg Wyler, who founded OneWeb, said in an interview that it wanted to bring the internet to every unconnected school in the world by 2022, then provide reasonably priced internet throughout the world five years later by making about 720 satellites and putting them into orbit.
SoftBank is joining a list of OneWeb partners that includes Airbus, Qualcomm, Richard Branson of the Virgin Group and the satellite company Intelsat.
Mr. Wyler said in the interview that the job creation number came from estimates of jobs that had been or would be created in its ranks and at partners like Qualcomm. Many of the jobs, he said, would be at OneWeb’s satellite manufacturing plant in Exploration Park, Fla., which is a joint venture with Airbus.
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