Either he's lying about that or he has guaranteed a position as Trump's number one favourite after Lighthizer.
1. The issue will become moot in a few years.
2. Trump is motivated to misinterpret promises--especially if they involve big numbers--since he's an idiot, and eager for "wins" to brag about.
3. After Trump's emotionally invested into his New Clothes, none of his advisors will want to tell him they aren't there.
> Other countries, in essence, are providing us with a sovereign wealth fund,” he told commentator Larry Kudlow, himself a top economic adviser in the first Trump term. “We have these agreements in place where the Japanese, the Koreans and to some extent the Europeans will invest in companies and industries that we direct them, largely at the president’s discretion.”
> the Europeans will invest in companies and industries that we direct them, largely at the president’s discretion.
The only significant general-purpose sovereign wealth funds in the EU are a French one worth 30bn and an Irish one worth $16bn. And the EU, which is the entity which makes trade deals, has no control over those. The EU has no significant money of its own (~200bn budget/year) and has no ability to control what member states spend their money on, and member states in general are uninterested in sovereign wealth funds, nevermind ones which invest specifically in American assets.
As far as I can see, what the 'deal' actually says is that private companies will invest an extra $600bn in the US by 2028, with the EU admitting it has no actual control over this, because of course it doesn't. But this is, y'know, not out of line with the level of FDI that you'd expect anyway, so really that bit of the trade deal boils down to _nothing_, an acknowledgement of what will probably happen in the normal course of events, a completely meaningless promise given for PR reasons.
In general, most of the non-tariff component of these ‘deals’ is of that form; stuff which the government obviously can’t control but which the private sector might reasonably be expected to do anyway.
Freedom-minded technology orgs like Wikimedia Foundation, Packet Clearing House, Internet Archive, ISOC, the EFF and the Free Software Foundation will not have anywhere to go to escape the net.
That's like striking a deal with a mr.Beast and consider the public and private holdings of YouTube part of your own net worth.
I mean I would love EU to be in such a position to be able to do such deals even if I don't support such a deal but that's not the case. Maybe Poland can send money I don't know but in Europe overall there's no other consolidated pro-USA power.
Maybe Bessent talks to provoke a reaction or induce something in their electoral base?
And what would Putin get?