WASHINGTON (AP) — Winning praise from President-elect Donald Trump for being a "great man of industry," Japanese tech billionaire Masayoshi Son promised to invest $50 billion in new startups in the United States, committing to creating 50,000 new jobs.
The announcement is the latest instance in which Trump appears to be conducting economic policy via ad-hoc deal-making — sometimes taking credit whether he deserves it or not.
The claim was a stretch; Ford had no plans to move the plant and had already agreed to keep producing one specific model there, although it did back away from a plan to shift production of the Lincoln MKC, a small SUV, from Louisville to Cuautitlan, Mexico.
Because he said he would do a lot of deregulation, I said, 'This is great, the U.S. will become great again'.
Trump plans to meet with leading tech executives next week, a group that will include venture capitalist Peter Thiel — one of Trump's few supporters in Silicon Valley — and Cisco Systems CEO Chuck Robbins.
Foxconn Technology Group issued a statement saying it could "confirm that we are in preliminary discussions regarding a potential investment that would represent an expansion of our current US operations."
The carrier's attempt to join with rival T-Mobile failed in 2014 after regulators objected to combining two of the four largest mobile telecom companies in the United States.
