SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son met with Donald Trump earlier this month and pledged to invest $50 billion in the U.S. | AP Photo Trump touts previously announced Sprint, OneWeb hiring pledges

President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday claimed credit for bringing 8,000 new private-sector jobs to the United States, including 5,000 that he says telecommunications company Sprint Corp. will relocate back from "other countries."

But the commitments by Sprint and OneWeb, a satellite manufacturer, are in line with hiring and investment pledges already made by their chief corporate benefactor, Japan-based SoftBank, whose top executive met with Trump earlier this month.


Sprint is owned by SoftBank, and earlier this year, a restructuring led Sprint to slash 2,500 jobs as it struggles to find a bigger foothold in the cutthroat U.S. wireless market. Asked about its new target, a spokeswoman told POLITICO the "5,000 jobs announced today are part of the 50,000 jobs that [SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son] previously announced. It will be a combination of newly created jobs and bringing some existing jobs back to the U.S."

Trump, for his part, told reporters at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday that Sprint offered to bring jobs back to the U.S. because of "what is happening and the spirit and the hope" from his election. Pressed later on the claim, the president-elect insisted that "because of me they are doing 5,000 jobs in this country."

Trump also announced that OneWeb would be hiring 3,000 people in the United States. But SoftBank earlier this month reached a deal with OneWeb to provide the upstart company $1.2 billion in funding, and OneWeb's widely publicized Dec. 19 announcement had included a commitment to “create nearly 3,000 new engineering, manufacturing and supporting jobs in the U.S. over the next four years,” according to a news release at the time.

A spokesman for OneWeb did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"So we have a combination of Sprint with 5,000 jobs, and that's coming from all over the world, they are coming back from the United States, which is a nice change, and also OneWeb," Trump told reporters.

Both announcements mark the latest outreach from SoftBank’s Son, who emerged from a meeting earlier this month at Trump Tower promising to create 50,000 new jobs in the United States while investing more than $50 billion here. Trump at the time took credit for the announcement, yet SoftBank revealed its plans for increased U.S. investment using a fund backed by Saudi Arabia in October — before Trump won the White House.

Son also has aspired to be a bigger business player in the U.S., particularly with Sprint, which SoftBank purchased in 2013. During the Obama administration, SoftBank sought to pair Sprint with one of its wireless competitors, T-Mobile, but federal regulators raised competition concerns with the deal.

"It’s clearly a design by Masa to influence and improve the relationship with the new administration," said Roger Entner, the founder and lead analyst at Recon Analytics.

A spokesman for SoftBank did not immediately respond to a request for comment.