Trumponomics: Trump Meets With Chinese Billionaire to Talk 1 Million Jobs
While Obama keeps throwing an endless pity party for his best celebrity friends, Trump is working on creating jobs.
Alibaba (BABA) founder and executive chairman Jack Ma is meeting President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower today to discuss the company's commitment to create 1 million new jobs in the United States over the next five years.
The meeting comes shortly after SoftBank Chairman and Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, who is also a good friend of Ma and early investor in his e-commerce empire, pledged to invest $50 billion in the U.S. to create 50,000 jobs.
Think of Alibaba as the Chinese Amazon and eBay. It's a big company and Ma has been pushing an interesting twist on it.
"We want to help U.S entrepreneurs, small business owners, and brands and companies of all sizes sell their goods to the growing Chinese consumer class. Chinese consumers will get to buy the American products they want. This, in turn, will help create American jobs and increase U.S. exports," wrote Ma in an Op-Ed for the Wall Street Journal back in 2015.
Like plenty of domestic corporations, Ma is trying to adapt to Trump's agenda. Or appearing to. The outcome may be more complicated and yet it's telling that major foreign corporations have also been eager to get on board with the new economic reality that Trump has promised to create. While those inveighing against "protectionism" have insisted that Trump would cut us off from the world in damaging ways, the opposite is taking place.
"We had a great meeting, and a great, great entrepreneur, one of the best in the world, and he loves this country, and he loves China," Trump said from Trump Tower in New York City. "Jack and I are going to do some great things."