Sprint's Jobs Pledge to Trump Tied to Broader SoftBank Promises From Earlier in December
President-elect Donald Trump touted Sprint’s Wednesday announcement that it would bring 5,000 jobs to the U.S., which a carrier spokesman confirmed to us was part of an earlier commitment from parent company SoftBank to bring 50,000 jobs to the U.S.…
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SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son met with Trump earlier this month and made that pledge then (see 1612060073). “Yesterday’s announcement was a demonstration of how we are creating the jobs and fulfilling the commitment,” a Sprint spokesman said. “I just got a call by the head people at Sprint, and they’re bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States, they’re taking them from other countries, they’re bringing them back to the United States,” Trump said Wednesday, not mentioning the earlier pledge. “And Masa and some other people were very much involved in that, so I want to thank them.” Trump was “intimately involved” with making the deal happen, incoming press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters Thursday. “Sprint’s CEO called him yesterday. … Obviously we’ll continue to follow up on this and make sure it happens. But you’re going to see more and more of this. … I think this is just the tip of the iceberg.” A Sprint news release said it “will begin discussions immediately with its business partners, states and cities to determine the right locations in the U.S. to create these jobs” and it “expects to fulfill this commitment by the end of its fiscal year 2017 and will provide additional details when they are available.” The jobs “will support a variety of functions across the organization including its Customer Care and Sales teams,” Sprint said. The carrier issued a statement from CEO Marcelo Claure expressing excitement about working with Trump. The president-elect and Spicer also touted 3,000 jobs they said would be brought to the U.S. by OneWeb, a satellite firm SoftBank invested $1 billion in this month. SoftBank announced the jobs figure in its Dec. 19 release on that investment, saying it’s “expected to create nearly 3,000 new engineering, manufacturing and supporting jobs in the U.S. over the next four years.” There's speculation Sprint may try to merge with T-Mobile under the incoming administration (see 1612090053).