Trumps handel, fra elpais, konklusjonen på slutten, det funker, det går veien, og trumpern blir valgt på nytt;
Trump declares himself the CEO of the US and raises business investment to nearly $4 Trillion
The president is applying the same strategy of threats and blackmail with major corporations as he did during the trade war
The office of president of the United States entails being the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, among many other responsibilities. For
Donald Trump — his whole life an aggressive and ambitious businessman before becoming a politician — that is not enough, and he has begun to adopt the manners and responsibilities that in the corporate world are assigned to CEOs.
What matters is who makes the decisions, whatever the title may be. Donald Trump, without yet having concluded the trade war with countries and geographic blocs, has spent weeks opening up a new front with major corporations. He has intervened in historic decisions such as forcing Coca-Cola to change its secret recipe so that it is made with cane sugar, and has hinted at creating a sovereign wealth fund in order to decide directly where the United States invests around the world. This past Thursday, rumors circulated about the state taking a stake in Intel.
But above all, Trump boasts of having attracted nearly $4 trillion (twice the GDP of Spain) in private money, plus as much again in generic commitments from countries such as Japan and
Saudi Arabia. All this in just over half a year. Generally, Trump’s method with companies mirrors that with states: he singles out a particular industry and, within a few days, major firms react with a new investment in Kentucky or South Carolina. As with electoral promises, only time will tell whether each of one delivers on its promise.
Trump’s latest major business-style move has been to bypass general agreements with countries and instead negotiate directly with companies for the collection of a percentage of their sales in those places. Specifically, giants
Nvidia and ADM would pay 15% of their sales in China from their flagship artificial intelligence chip. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said that it may not be a bad idea to extend this approach to other sectors.
Attracting investments
Every good CEO is measured by several factors. Markets usually scrutinize shareholder payouts, whether in the form of dividends (extra payments per share, usually funded from profits) or that somewhat nebulous concept of “creating value.” To simplify greatly, this means ensuring the company continues to grow. For Trump, the United States can only grow through massive investments on its soil. That’s how jobs are created or preserved, and incomes rise, feeding back into consumption and spending. First, raw capitalism.
According to the White House itself — recorded almost exhaustively and with links directing to official press releases — in the time since the year began, investment commitments on U.S. soil amount to $8 trillion. More than half of this comes from direct agreements with nations: $1.4 trillion from the United Arab Emirates, $1.2 trillion from Qatar, $1 trillion from Japan, $600 billion from Saudi Arabia, $500 billion from India, and $450 billion from South Korea. Not yet included are the
$600 billion the European Union is expected to allocate if it wants to lock in the 15% tariff ag
reed with Washington.
The rest — around a hundred announcements — comes directly from corporate boards. Apple is the biggest contributor so far. Apple CEO Tim Cook himself went to the White House in early August to shake Trump’s hand and announce that his company would roll out a $600 billion, four-year investment plan to strengthen U.S. manufacturing infrastructure and create 20,000 new jobs.
Until that day, Nvidia had been the most generous, well before its willingness to negotiate on Chinese sales. The first company in history to surpass $4 trillion in market capitalization announced in mid-April that it would spend $500 billion over four years developing chips and AI technology in its home country.
Also in the
AI sphere lies the third major corporate bet of Trump’s second term: the Stargate project, a $500 billion initiative unveiled in January with OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle as investors, to build a new AI infrastructure for OpenAI itself.
From AI to chips. Above the $100 billion investment threshold, there are three similar pledges: Micron Technology will build a new plant in Idaho and renovate its existing one in Virginia with $200 billion; IBM will spend $150 billion over five years to modernize its U.S. facilities; and Taiwan’s TSMC will allocate $100 billion to build a factory in Phoenix, Arizona.
The next tier includes another industry often singled out by Trump: pharmaceuticals. Johnson & Johnson will raise its investment by 25% compared to the previous four-year period, reaching $50 billion through 2029; Roche will spend $50 billion modernizing its sites in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and California while building a fifth in an as-yet-unnamed location; AstraZeneca will invest another $50 billion through 2030; Switzerland’s Novartis will put $23 billion into modernizing its ten U.S. sites and opening seven more; and France’s Sanofi is committing $20 billion for research and local production.
In this investment landscape, we also find the global retail giant. Amazon plans to allocate $20 billion to expand warehouse capacity in Pennsylvania, another $10 billion to build data centers in North Carolina, and an additional $4 billion to strengthen infrastructure in small cities across the country, aiming to create up to 100,000 jobs.
If technology, AI, and pharmaceutical labs are sectors of undeniable productivity and future vision, the one favored by Republican voters (and likely by Trump himself) looks more to the past. The automotive industry list includes both domestic and foreign players in one of the industries hardest hit by the tariff skirmish: Hyundai, with $21 billion and nearly $6 billion for a new plant in Louisiana; John Deere, with $20 billion; Stellantis, with $5 billion to reopen its Illinois plant and build a new megahub in Detroit; General Motors, with $4 billion to shift production from Mexico to Michigan, Kansas, and Tennessee; and Ford, which will invest $5 billion to upgrade its Kentucky and Michigan plants to be capable of producing new models and batteries for electric cars.
The examples keep coming, amounting to more than 100, and each week the White House adds new milestones at almost the same pace that Trump incorporates interventionist elements into global big business.
“This is truly bizarre and unusual, and the troubling thing — beyond the individual instances of AMD and Nvidia — is the possibility that this will be expanded,” said Gary Hufbauer, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, speaking to Bloomberg.
“
Everything is now ‘national security,’ according to the new definition, which means it’s all subject to export licenses and then they give you a license based on your contribution,” he added.
Paying more to keep doing business. By order of the new Chief Executive Officer-in-Chief.