Not all headlines are created equal.
The headline &#8220;Carrier To Keep 1,000 Jobs In US&#8221; is not the same as the headline &#8220;SoftBank to Invest $50 Billion to Create 50,000 Jobs In US.&#8221; That&#8217;s because Donald Trump&#8217;s deal with Carrier is the height of crony capitalism; SoftBank&#8217;s decision to invest in the United States is, based on the information currently available, simply capitalism working as it should.
In the Carrier deal, Trump cudgeled Carrier into accepting a $7 million tax incentive in return for a $65 million operating loss by threatening Carrier&#8217;s parent company with the loss of billions of dollars in federal contracts. That&#8217;s crony capitalism. It&#8217;s special incentives given to one company, crammed down with the warning that the government will club them into oblivion if they don&#8217;t take the deal.
Not so with SoftBank.
According to <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/06/trump-says-softbank-will-invest-50-billion-in-the-us-aiming-to-create-50000-jobs.html">CNBC.com</a>, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son met with Trump at Trump Tower on Tuesday afternoon. Trump then announced that Son would invest $50 billion in the United States in order to create 50,000 jobs. Trump said on Twitter that &#8220;Masa said he would never do this had we (Trump) not won the election!&#8221; In October, media reported on SoftBank&#8217;s $100 billion investment fund set up with Saudi Arabia; CNBC reports that according to Dow Jones, the $50 billion will come from that fund. It was unclear whether the fund would have been slated to invest $50 billion in the United States without Trump&#8217;s election, but we have no evidence that Trump was fibbing.
Stocks jumped for both Sprint, owned by SoftBank, and T-Mobile, a mobile competitor Sprint has been attempting to buy despite efforts by the Obama administration to block such a deal. CNBC further reports that Apple might try to be part of the deal, keeping a small number of jobs in the US to get Trump off their back.
Leaving aside the Apple portion of the deal &#8211; no company should be threatened for engaging in competitive economic activity &#8211; the rest sounds as though Son got assurances from Trump that he would not use the <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303874504579373242977741138">antitrust powers of the feds</a> to try to block a prospective merger between Sprint and T-Mobile. That wouldn&#8217;t be a handout to Son. That would be in line with a broader strategy of deregulation that would open up markets to a bevy of companies.
That&#8217;s good news.
And that&#8217;s legitimate government non-intervention creating a broader market for investment, not the gun-to-the-head, keep-your-jobs-here-or-else routine that we saw with Carrier.
Good for Trump. We can only hope that he follows through on his promises to cut taxes and regulations, creating a thriving business environment for business investments from across the globe.

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EXCELLENT TRUMP: Trump Secures $50B Investment From Japanese SoftBank With Free Markets!

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