When he met President-elect Donald Trump in early December, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son promised to bring thousands of new jobs to the U.S. It looks like Son is starting to make good on that promise.
Trump told reporters Wednesday, "I was just called by the head people at Sprint. And they're going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States. They're taking them from other countries."
After Trump's announcement, Sprint confirmed it would produce 5,000 fresh U.S. jobs by the end of fiscal year 2017 — either by creating positions or returning them from overseas.
Sprint previously cut about 2,500 U.S. jobs during a restructuring earlier this year, mostly from customer service fields.
Trump also touted the 3,000 new jobs created at satellite startup OneWeb, which the company announced last week.
Son's SoftBank owns Sprint. And SoftBank led the $1 billion fundraising round OneWeb needed to create those new jobs.
It's not clear what role, if any, Trump played in SoftBank's decisions. The company had already committed to investing billions of dollars in the U.S. before the election was decided.
But Son has every incentive to tie his business deals to Trump. A friendly Trump administration could help Son realize his long-denied ambition of a merger between Sprint and T-Mobile.
Matt Picht
