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President Donald Trump wants to boost US oil production, pledging to bring costs down as he returned to office this week — but analysts warn his efforts could be hampered by the industry itself.Taking aim at an “inflation crisis” which he said was driven by rising energy prices, Trump vowed: “Today I will also declare a national energy emergency. We will drill, baby, drill.””We will be a rich nation again. And it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it,” he pledged in his inaugural address on Monday.While the United States is the world’s leading crude oil producer, the US president wants to boost oil and gas production to lower costs, fill strategic reserves and “export American energy all over the world.”In declaring a national energy emergency, Trump reversed some drilling bans, including in a protected area in Alaska.”It’s hard to reconcile the notion that we have an energy emergency, when the US produced 13.2 million barrels per day of crude oil in 2024,” said analyst Stewart Glickman of CFRA.This was “more than any other country.”The US Energy Information Administration also estimates that US production will hit 13.5 million barrels a day this year, “which would imply yet another annual record,” Glickman told AFP.- Economic interest -But analysts say the prospect of oversupply and worries about global demand currently could make US producers reluctant to step on the accelerator — to prevent crude prices from falling too much.US oil companies will likely “act in their own interest” economically, and drill when they expect it to be profitable, said Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates.That will depend on the price of oil, he added, alongside the return on capital.Some oil majors are already cautious about global supply.”We are seeing record levels of demand for oil, record levels for demand for products coming out of our refineries,” said ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods on CNBC in November.”But we also see a lot of supply in the world right now,” he said, adding that much of it comes from the United States.Woods recounted how, after the merger of Exxon and Mobil in 1999, the group owned 45 refineries.But when he took the helm in 2017, it only had 22 refineries, he told CNBC.Trump’s strategy has also puzzled analysts considering the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies (OPEC+) has 5.8 million barrels per day of unused capacity, said Robert Yawger of Mizuho Americas.Eight members of OPEC+, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, have planned to gradually reverse production cuts of 2.2 million barrels per day since last year.- Profitability -The new US administration “has to justify increases in production by the bottom line. It has to be cost-effective,” said Yawger.”They’re not going to repeat the problem that we’ve done in the past, and that’s just oversupply the market and kill the golden goose,” he added.The emergence of shale oil and gas at the turn of the 2010s disrupted the American oil industry.Concerned about the rise of the United States, Saudi Arabia decided to retaliate by flooding the oil market, causing the price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the American benchmark, to fall to $26 in 2016.A part of the shale oil industry shuttered, and surviving players vowed to manage their growth and finances more effectively.”Misguided, irrational energy policies are done,” said Jeff Eshelman, president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said in response to Trump’s announcements. “America’s vast resources will be unleashed responsibly,” he added.

Meta-owned Instagram has been wooing creators from TikTok as the China-based video-snippet sharing app’s future remains uncertain in the United States.After officially increasing the allowed length of videos and adding a new editing tool, Meta recently began letting TikTok creators earn as much as $5,000 over the course of three months for posting “Reels” to Facebook and Instagram.The “Breakthrough Bonus” program for eligible TikTok creators is intended to “help jumpstart their growth on our apps,” a Meta spokesperson told AFP.In addition, Meta is quietly offering incentives amounting to tens of thousands of dollars a month to get creators with large TikTok audiences to switch to rival platform Reels at Instagram, according to a report Wednesday in The Information.”Meta has been trying to take advantage of the volatility around TikTok for months, and now its efforts to court TikTok creators have gone from subtle to overt,” said Emarketer analyst Jasmine Enberg.- Temporary reprieve -The campaign to get TikTok stars to switch allegiance to Reels comes as TikTok’s future in the United States remains unsettled.TikTok is facing down a US law that ordered the company to divest from its Chinese owner ByteDance or be banned in the United States.In one of his first acts in office, President Donald Trump ordered a pause on enforcing the law that should have seen TikTok effectively made illegal in the country on Sunday.The executive order directed his attorney general to delay the implementation of the law for 75 days.The TikTok ban passed due to concerns that the Chinese government could exploit the app to spy on Americans or covertly influence US public opinion through data collection and content manipulation.TikTok briefly shut down in the United States late Saturday as the law’s sale deadline approached, leaving millions of dismayed users barred from the app. That same day, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri announced that video snippets shared on Reels could now last 3 minutes instead of 90 seconds, a limit set more than two years ago.On Sunday, Mosseri announced a new video editing application will make its debut on iPhones in February.That comes as TikTok’s flagship editing tool, CapCut, has disappeared from mobile app stores in the United States because it’s owned by the same parent company, ByteDance.”There’s a lot going on right now, but no matter what happens, it’s our job to provide the best possible tools for creators,” Mosseri said.- Zuckerberg and Trump -Analyst Enberg believes the new features won’t be enough to win over the TikTok faithful, with some likely to be irked by “blatant copycat behavior” as many are “rattled” by Meta’s moves to align itself with the Trump administration.Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg has dined with Trump since his victory, openly praised the president and appointed Trump allies to positions of influence at the tech firm.Meta also recently ended programs to prevent disinformation and vitriol on its platform, efforts long criticized by political conservatives.While Instagram is considered the most likely alternative to TikTok, Chinese application named Xiaohongshu — nicknamed “Red Note” — is a preferred option for many in the United States.Even though the app is in Mandarin, many see it as a way of thumbing their noses at Meta and US politicians.”The potential of a cash bonus is going to be hard for TikTok creators to resist, regardless of how they feel about Meta,” said analyst Enberg.As for users, they will follow where their beloved creators lead, and there is no better way to get them to Instagram than money, Enberg reasoned.

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday nominated a Secret Service agent who rushed onstage to protect him from a would-be gunman during a failed election rally assassination bid to become the agency’s next director.Sean Curran, the head of Trump’s personal security detail, was among several agents who surrounded Trump as a gunman in Butler, Pennsylvania, opened fire on the then-candidate, leaving him with a bloodied ear.He was identified by US media as the man in sunglasses to the right of Trump in a series of iconic photos showing the Republican raising a defiant fist as he is escorted offstage with blood trickling down his face.The nomination flies in the face of a review of Secret Service failures following the attack, which recommended looking to someone with a wealth of experience outside the organization for its next leader.”Sean is a Great Patriot, who has protected my family over the past few years, and that is why I trust him to lead the Brave Men and Women of the United States Secret Service,” Trump posted on his website, Truth Social.The president noted Curran’s 23-year Secret Service career that began when he was a special agent in the Newark field office and led to his promotion to become head of the Presidential Protective Division in the Republican’s first term.”He proved his fearless courage when he risked his own life to help save mine from an assassin’s bullet in Butler, Pennsylvania,” Trump said.”I have complete and total confidence in Sean to make the United States Secret Service stronger than ever before.”The appointment had been expected, with the president’s son Donald Trump Jr announcing as long ago as last week that the “great patriot” would be getting the job.- ‘Historic’ failure -An independent panel called for a sweeping shake-up of the Secret Service following what it described as its “historic” failure to prevent the July assassination attempt.”The Secret Service has become bureaucratic, complacent, and static,” the four members of the bipartisan review panel said in a letter to then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that accompanied their 52-page report.”The Secret Service as an agency requires fundamental reform to carry out its mission,” they said, and without reforms another assassination attempt such as the one that took place in Pennsylvania “can and will happen again.”Trump was grazed on his right ear when a 20-year-old gunman opened fire from a nearby rooftop while the Republican presidential candidate was holding a campaign rally in Butler on July 13.One person in the audience was killed and the gunman, Thomas Crooks, was shot dead by a Secret Service sniper.Much of the report was devoted to identifying the specific security failures that allowed the assassination attempt, many of which had already been publicly acknowledged by the Secret Service.The review panel said a new leadership team with “significant experience outside the Secret Service” was needed in the wake of the assassination attempt.”The events of Butler suggest that there is an urgent need for fresh thinking informed by external experience and perspective,” the report said.Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle resigned following the assassination attempt and was replaced by acting director Ronald Rowe.

The Republican-led US Congress delivered President Donald Trump an early victory in his promised crackdown on illegal immigration Wednesday as lawmakers green-lit a bill to expand pretrial incarceration for foreign criminal suspects.The Laken Riley Act — which mandates the detention of undocumented immigrants charged with theft-related crimes — is named for a 22-year-old student murdered by a Venezuelan man with no papers who was wanted for shoplifting.”Criminal illegal aliens must be detained, deported, and NEVER allowed back into our country,” Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House of Representatives, said on X.”The American people demand and deserve safety and security.”The law passed the upper chamber in a comfortable 64-35 vote earlier this week after sailing through the House of Representatives, with Republicans keen to highlight what they described as weak border security policies from Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden.But the newly inaugurated Senate — which flipped from Democratic to Republican control after November’s election — added a tweak that expands mandatory detention to “crimes resulting in death or serious bodily injury.”That meant it had to go back to the House for one last vote but it cleared that hurdle easily as 46 Democrats joined the Republicans, and it will now be the first piece of legislation Trump signs into law.The 78-year-old has promised to crack down on illegal border crossings and carry out mass deportations. He has named Tom Homan, a veteran hardline immigration official, as his border chief.The Republican president repeatedly spotlighted Laken Riley’s case during his election campaign as he railed against undocumented migrants, blaming them for “poisoning the blood” of the country.Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, was convicted of her murder after she was found dead in a wooded area at the University of Georgia in Athens.”We will no longer prioritize dangerous criminal illegal aliens over the lives of Americans,” Republican Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa said in a statement.”The era of open borders and lawless chaos is over. Republicans are securing the border and putting the safety and well-being of US citizens first.”Democrats complained, however, that it would cost $83 billion to implement the new law in the first three years — more than the Homeland Security Department’s annual budget — and flies in the face of due process.New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in a speech on the House floor that detaining people accused, but not convicted, of a crime would be a “fundamental suspension of a core American value.”And she accused Republicans of hypocrisy on law and order for failing to oppose Trump’s pardon of hundreds of violent criminals who stormed the Capitol in 2021 — “unleashing people who attacked police officers here on this Capitol.”

Three federal judges on Wednesday strongly condemned President Donald Trump’s sweeping pardons of supporters who stormed the US Capitol four years ago in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.”No pardon can change the tragic truth of what happened on January 6, 2021,” District Judge Tanya Chutkan said in an order dismissing the charges against a Capitol riot defendant.”It cannot whitewash the blood, feces, and terror that the mob left in its wake,” Chutkan said. “And it cannot repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power.”Trump, just hours after taking office on Monday, granted pardons to more than 1,500 of his supporters who stormed the Capitol in a bid to halt congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.In doing so, he also commuted the sentences of 14 members of the far-right Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia.Chutkan presided over the criminal case filed against Trump by special counsel Jack Smith accusing him of seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The case never came to trial, and it was dismissed after Trump won the November election, in line with a long-standing Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.Two other Washington-based federal judges who presided over cases involving Capitol riot defendants also dismissed the charges on Wednesday with strongly worded condemnations of the pardons.District Judge Beryl Howell said there was no factual basis for dismissing the charges against two of the defendants before her court, only an assertion by the Trump White House that a “grave national injustice” had been done.”No ‘national injustice’ occurred here, just as no outcome-determinative election fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election,” Howell said, adding that “poor losers” cannot be allowed to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power “with impunity.””That merely raises the dangerous specter of future lawless conduct by other poor losers and undermines the rule of law,” she said.- ‘Will not change the truth’ -District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotel said the dismissal of charges and pardons “will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021.””What occurred that day is preserved for the future through thousands of contemporaneous videos, transcripts of trials, jury verdicts, and judicial opinions,” Kollar-Kotel said.”Those records are immutable and represent the truth, no matter how the events of January 6 are described by those charged or their allies.”Trump, whose first term as president ended under the cloud of the Capitol assault, has repeatedly played down the violence of January 6, even going so far as to describe it as a “day of love.”More than 140 police officers were injured in hours of clashes with rioters wielding flagpoles, baseball bats, hockey sticks and other makeshift weapons along with Tasers and canisters of bear spray.Trump repeatedly pledged during his election campaign to pardon those who took part in the Capitol assault, calling them “patriots” and “political prisoners.”The Capitol assault followed a fiery speech by then-president Trump to tens of thousands of his supporters near the White House in which he repeated his false claims that he won the 2020 race.He then encouraged the crowd to march on Congress.

For years, as disputes over names on the map riled up nationalist passions in several parts of the world, US policymakers have watched warily, trying to stay out or to quietly encourage peace.Suddenly, the United States has gone from a reluctant arbiter to a nomenclature belligerent, as President Donald Trump declared that the Gulf of Mexico will henceforth be called the “Gulf of America.”In an executive order signed hours after he returned to the White House, Trump called the water body an “indelible part of America” critical to US oil production and fishing and “a favorite destination for American tourism and recreation activities.”The term Gulf of America was soon used by the US Coast Guard in a press release on enforcing Trump’s new crackdown on migrants, as well as Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, when discussing a winter storm.Deep-sea ecologist Andrew Thaler said Trump’s declaration was “very silly” and would likely be ignored by maritime professionals.A president has the authority to rename sites within the United States — as Trump also did.”The Gulf of Mexico, however, is a body of water that borders several countries and includes pockets of high seas,” said Thaler, founder of Blackbeard Biologic Science and Environmental Advisors.”There really isn’t any precedent for a US president renaming international geologic and oceanographic features. Any attempt to rename the entire Gulf of Mexico would be entirely symbolic,” he said.- Mexico hits back -Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has cheekily suggested calling the United States “Mexican America,” pointing to a map from well before Washington seized one-third of her country in 1848.”For us it is still the Gulf of Mexico and for the entire world it is still the Gulf of Mexico,” she said Tuesday.The International Hydrographic Organization, set up a century ago, works to survey the world’s seas and oceans and is the closest to an authority on harmonizing names for international waters.The United Nations also has an expert group on geographical names, which opens its next meeting on April 28.Martin H. Levinson, president emeritus of the Institute of General Semantics, said it was unknown how much political capital Trump would invest in seeking name recognition by other countries.”Does he really want to strong-arm them for something as minor as this?” Levinson asked.”I think the political benefit is to the domestic audience that he’s playing to — saying we’re patriotic, this is our country, we’re not going to let the name be subsumed by other countries,” he said.He doubted that other countries would change the name but said it was possible Google Earth — a more ready reference to laypeople — could list an alternative name, as it has in other disputes.- ‘Geopolitics of spectacle’ -Among the most heated disputes, South Korea has long resented calling the body of water to its east the Sea of Japan and has advocated for it to be called the East Sea.The United States, an ally of both countries, has kept Sea of Japan but Korean-Americans have pushed at the local level for school textbooks to say East Sea.In the Middle East, Trump in his last term angered Iranians by publicly using the term Arabian Gulf for the oil-rich water body historically known as the Persian Gulf but which Arab nationalists have sought to rename.The United States has also advocated maintaining a 2018 deal where Greece agreed for its northern neighbor to change its name to North Macedonia from Macedonia, but Athens ulitmately rejected due to historical associations with Alexander the Great.Gerry Kearns, a professor of geography at Maynooth University in Ireland, said that Trump’s move was part of the “geopolitics of spectacle” but also showed his ideological bent.With Trump also threatening to take the Panama Canal and Greenland, Trump is seeking to project a new type of Monroe Doctrine, the 1823 declaration by the United States that it would dominate the Western Hemisphere, Kearns said.”Names work because they are shared; we know we are talking about the same thing,” he wrote in an essay.”In claiming the right to force others to use the name of his choosing, Trump is asserting a sort of sovereignty over an international body of water.” 

A new wildfire erupted north of Los Angeles on Wednesday, exploding in size and sparking thousands of evacuation orders in a region already staggering from the effects of huge blazes.Ferocious flames were devouring hillsides near Castaic Lake, spreading rapidly to cover 5,000 acres (2,000 hectares) in just over two hours.The fire was being fanned by strong, dry Santa Ana winds that were racing through the area, pushing a vast pall of smoke and embers ahead of the flames.Evacuations were ordered for 19,000 people all around the lake, which sits around 35 miles (56 kilometers) north of Los Angeles, and close to the city of Santa Clarita.”I’m just praying that our house doesn’t burn down,” one man told broadcaster KTLA as he packed his car.The fire came with the greater Los Angeles area still suffering after two enormous fires that killed more than two dozen people and destroyed thousands of structures.Robert Jensen from Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department urged everyone in the impacted area of the new blaze — dubbed the Hughes Fire — to leave immediately.”We’ve seen the devastation caused by people failing to follow those orders in the Palisades and Eaton fires,” he said.”I don’t want to see that here in our community as well. If you’ve been issued an evacuation order, please get out.”Television footage showed police driving around the neighborhood urging people to get out.There are four county jails in the Lake Castaic area, housing 4,700 people, the American Civil Liberties Union said.”We have long opposed the expansion of the jail system especially in dangerous fire zones and we are gravely concerned for the safety of people incarcerated in those jails,” said Melissa Camacho, senior staff attorney with the ACLU SoCal.”We urge our county supervisors to direct the LA Sheriff’s Department to immediately organize the transportation needed to evacuate the jails without delay.”California Highway Patrol said the fire was impacting traffic on the I5, a major artery that runs the length of the US West Coast.Helicopters and planes were on the scene dropping water and retardant on the blaze.That fleet included two Super Scoopers, enormous amphibious planes that can carry hundreds of gallons (liters) of water.Crews from Los Angeles County Fire Department and Angeles National Forest were also attacking the blaze from the ground.It was not immediately clear what sparked the fire, but it occurred during red flag fire conditions — when meteorologists say strong winds and low humidity create conditions ripe for rapid fire spread.Smoke was visible southwest of the fire as far away as Thousand Oaks and west as far as Ventura on the Pacific Coast.

Donald Trump’s recent threat to impose 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico are a negotiating tactic, the president’s long-time informal economic advisor argued Wednesday.”Donald Trump is doing exactly what any rational person would do understanding economics,” Arthur Laffer, one of the godfathers of supply-side economics, told AFP in an interview.”He’s using trade as a tool to exact other policies. It’s his leverage,” said Laffer, 84, who was an economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan and has long informally advised Trump, but is not part of his administration.”In order for that leverage to be true, in order for that leverage to really work, you have to be convinced that you will put those tariffs on,” he added.  Shortly after taking the oath of office on Monday, Trump said he was mulling new tariffs of 25 percent against the two close US allies starting February 1, accusing them of failing to tackle illegal immigration and drug trafficking.”I think President Trump believes that they could easily solve the immigration problem for the US, and they could make a big dent in the fentanyl problem,” Laffer said. Trump also threatened to impose a 10 percent tariff on China which, he said, had not done enough to tackle the flow of the synthetic opioid to Canada and Mexico, from where it is trafficked into the United States. Trump’s comments drew condemnation from Beijing and Ottawa, while Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said it was important to “keep a cool head and refer to signed agreements, beyond actual speeches.”Trump’s tariff and immigration proposals — which include the mass deportation of millions of undocumented workers — have been criticized as inflationary by many economists, who see these policies putting pressure on the Fed to pause interest rate cuts. Supporters such as Laffer and Treasury Secretary nominee Scott Bessent have asserted the president’s planned supply-side tax and deregulation reforms should help counteract any temporary inflationary pressures from tariffs.Asked what economic policies he hoped Trump would enact, Laffer named a wish list of measures he wanted to see.  “I hope we get tariffs reduced dramatically, and non-tariff barriers reduced, and quotas reduced,” he said.”I hope we get the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act re-upped,” he added, referring to Trump’s 2017 package of tax cuts, some of which is set to expire at the end of this year. “And I hope we get deregulation, we get cutting in government spending, and we go to a supply-side economy where we have a low rate broad-based flat tax, spending restraint, sound money, minimal regulations, free trade,” he added.

President Donald Trump has halted arrivals of refugees already cleared to enter the United States, according to a memo seen Wednesday, as he quickly pursues a sweeping crackdown on migration.Following an executive order signed Monday hours after Trump took office, “all previously scheduled travel of refugees to the United States is being canceled,” said a State Department email to groups working with new arrivals.The memo asked the UN International Organization for Migration not to move refugees to transit centers and said that all processing on cases has also been suspended.Refugees already resettled in the United States will continue to receive services as planned, it said.Trump in each of his presidential campaigns has run on promises to crack down on undocumented immigration.But the refugee move also targets a legal pathway for people fleeing wars, persecution or disasters.In his executive order, he said he was suspending refugee admissions as of January 27 and ordered a report on how to change the program, in part by giving “greater involvement” to states and local jurisdictions, which he said were being “inundated.”It also revoked his predecessor Joe Biden’s decision to consider the impact of climate change in refugee admissions.Trump said during his election campaign that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country” and earlier rose to prominence questioning the citizenship of Barack Obama, the first African-American president.- Shift at State Department -New Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, said Wednesday that the State Department will “no longer undertake any activities that facilitate or encourage mass migration. ””Our diplomatic relations with other countries, particularly in the Western Hemisphere, will prioritize securing America’s borders, stopping illegal and destabilizing migration and negotiating the repatriation of illegal immigrants,” Rubio said in a statement.Biden had embraced the refugee program as a way to support people in need through legal means.In the 2024 fiscal year, more than 100,000 refugees resettled in the United States, the most in three decades.The Democratic Republic of Congo and Myanmar have been among the top sources of refugees in recent years.Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, voiced alarm at Trump’s moves and said that acceptance of refugees was “a core American value.””The US Refugee Admissions Program has a long history of bipartisan support and is a life-saving tool for the most vulnerable refugees, all while making Americans safer by promoting stability around the world,” she said.The State Department memo said that Afghans who worked with the United States until the collapse of the Western-backed government in 2021 could still arrive through their separate resettlement program.But Shaheen voiced concern that Afghans were also being left in limbo with flights cancelled.The UN high commissioner for refugees estimates that there are 37.9 million refugees in the world, among some 122.6 million displaced people.Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, which advocates for refugees, said that Trump’s decision was “devastating” to people who had already lost so much.”Refugees go through one of the most rigorous vetting processes in the world, and it’s heartbreaking to see their dreams of safety derailed just days before, or in some cases, just hours before they were set to begin their new lives here,” she said.

Tech titan Elon Musk cast doubt Wednesday on a $500 billion AI project announced by US President Donald Trump, saying the money promised for the investment actually wasn’t there.The comments marked a rare instance of a split between the world’s richest man and Trump, with Musk playing a key role in the newly installed administration after spending $270 million on the election campaign.In his first full day in the White House, Trump on Tuesday announced a major investment to build infrastructure for artificial intelligence led by Japanese giant SoftBank and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.Trump said the venture, called Stargate, “will invest $500 billion, at least, in AI infrastructure in the United States.”But in a post on his social media platform X, Musk said the main investors “don’t actually have the money.””SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority,” Musk added in a subsequent post.- ‘Wrong’ -Musk’s swipe could be particularly targeted at OpenAI, the world’s leading AI startup that Musk helped found before leaving in 2018.The Tesla boss and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, who was present at the White House on Tuesday, have been mired in a serious feud with Musk opening repeated lawsuits against the company behind ChatGPT.”Wrong, as you surely know. Want to come visit the first site already under way?” Altman replied to Musk on X.”This is great for the country. I realize what is great for the country isn’t always what’s optimal for your companies, but in your new role I hope you’ll mostly put (country) first,” he added.OpenAI is one of the world’s highest valued startups but loses money on the high costs of turning out its expensive technology.According to the Wall Street Journal, cloud giant Oracle, which is also involved, has about $11 billion in cash and securities. SoftBank has roughly $30 billion of cash on hand.”The American people should take President Trump and those CEOs words for it. These investments are coming to our great country and American jobs are coming along with them,” Trump’s spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Fox News.The Stargate project is committed to invest an initial $100 billion in the project, and up to $500 billion over the next four years.Abu Dhabi’s AI-focused state fund MGX and Oracle are also providing funding for the project, while SoftBank-owned Arm, Microsoft and Nvidia will be technology partners.According to the companies, the project is initially building a data center operation in Texas, where construction is already underway.Ahead of taking office, Trump this month unveiled a $20 billion Emirati investment in US data centers, as well as a previous investment pledge from SoftBank.