US President Donald Trump hosted an exclusive dinner with leading business figures, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Salesforce’s Marc Benioff, and Rakuten’s Hiroshi Mikitani, to spotlight a wave of Japanese investments in the United States, Bloomberg reported.
The event, held at the home of US Ambassador to Japan George Glass, brought together a powerhouse lineup of executives such as OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, Honda Motor Co. President Toshihiro Mibe, Toshiba’s Taro Shimada, and Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey.
“You have great companies — you’re phenomenal business people,” Trump said during the dinner, adding that the US “won’t let you down.” The dinner followed the announcement of several new potential Japanese investments in US projects, unveiled earlier in the day by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. According to Bloomberg, Lutnick said that the new deals alone could account for around $490 billion in investment — though many remain preliminary, and the figures reflect the high-end estimates.
The investments come under a trade framework reached earlier this year, in which Trump agreed to lower and cap tariffs on Japanese goods in return for Japan’s pledge to fund $550 billion in US projects. The $550 billion fund has been a source of differing interpretations between Washington and Tokyo. Trump has portrayed the amount as money his administration could “invest as we like,” claiming that 90% of the profits would go to the US.
Japan, however, views the agreement differently — describing the pledge as a combination of investments, loans, and loan guarantees aimed at supporting Japanese firms’ expansion and infrastructure projects in the US. The dinner and announcements mark an effort to reaffirm US-Japan economic cooperation amid global trade uncertainties.
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