President Trump's whirlwind Asia tour is yielding results, including a few key trade deals. One such deal has been struck with the Japanese car company Toyota, and that could be huge, as Toyota is probably the largest auto manufacturer on the planet.
Turns out, though, that Toyota, while confirming the deal, hasn't confirmed the investment that President Trump touted.
The world's top-selling automaker said it plans to continue investing in U.S. operations but wouldn't confirm on Wednesday that it will be $10 billion, as President Donald Trump had announced.
Trump said Toyota would invest $10 billion in the U.S. earlier this week on his trip to Asia. But that figure has been under question since then.
"I was just told by the prime minister that Toyota is going to be putting auto plants all over the United States to the tune of $10 billion," Trump told troops aboard the USS George Washington on Tuesday.
Toyota, at present, has 11 manufacturing plants in the United States, in California, Kentucky, Missouri, and several other states. According to a press release from last April, Toyota already employs close to 50,000 Americans in those 11 plants.
A Toyota executive explained that Trump's mention of the $10 billion figure may have been an estimate:
He even encouraged service members to go out and buy a Toyota, a departure from his usual support for U.S. automakers.
"During the first Trump administration, I think the figure was roughly around $10 billion, so while we didn't say the same scale, we did explain that we'll keep investing and providing employment as before," Toyota executive Hiroyuki Ueda told reporters in Japan, according to multiple media reports. "So, probably because of that context, the figure of about $10 billion came up."
Notice that he mentioned the first Trump administration. There was no such investment negotiated by the Biden administration. It's not easy to negotiate trade deals and investments when the guy in charge is only half-awake, after all.
But that all has changed.
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Toyota did confirm it will be expanding its American operations.
Toyota officials told The Center Square on Wednesday that more details would come.
"As we've done for 68 years, Toyota will continue to invest in U.S. operations, staying true to our principle of building where we sell and buying where we build," the company said in a statement. "This effort aligns with President Trump's emphasis on growing investment and manufacturing in America and underscores our enduring commitment to U.S. manufacturing, supply chains, jobs, and customers. More details will follow soon."
There's an important detail in that statement, where it mentions supply chains. There is far more in an automobile plant than just the building of cars; an entire infrastructure, not so much a supply chain as a supply web, is necessary to support that operation. Raw materials have to be refined, utilities have to be provided and maintained, and everything from turn-signal blinkers to microchips is required to build modern automobiles. And Toyota is talking about doing more of that here, using American workers and the American supply infrastructure.
That's a good deal whether it reaches $10 billion or not.
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