Billionaire Masayoshi Son has a plan to use hundreds of billions of dollars from Japan to build Trump-branded industrial parks on federal land across the U.S., according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal. The plan is to manufacture high-tech hardware, and while the details are reportedly still being hammered out, it all sounds pretty wild. The Journal’s description of the early plans: “…ambitious to the point of science fiction.”
Internally at Softbank, where Son is CEO, the project was dubbed Project Crystal Land and has been in the works for about six months, according to the Journal. Early versions of the idea imagined a new $1 trillion city in the Arizona desert outside of Phoenix that was pitched to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick as a competitor to China’s Shenzhen—the heart of the country’s tech sector, which borders Hong Kong.
By the summer, Son pitched his idea directly to President Trump, according to the Journal, and it included some of the most futuristic elements, including “robot-filled semiconductor-fabrication plants.” The new city would have housing for workers, and it all sounds very similar to something Trump first pitched in March 2023, when the 2024 presidential election was still a year and a half away.
Back in 2023, Trump dubbed them “freedom cities,” and they were to be built on federal land, much like Son’s idea. Almost 40% of Arizona is federally owned. The possible difference between the vision for freedom cities in 2023 and 2026 is likely to be a new emphasis on artificial intelligence. Back in 2023, Trump was talking about the need for futuristic transportation, including flying cars. AI, as we use the term today, was still relatively new at the time, since ChatGPT was launched in November 2022.
“Just as the United States led the automotive revolution in the last century, I want to ensure that America, not China, leads the revolution in air mobility. These breakthroughs can transform commerce, bring a giant infusion of wealth into rural America, and connect families in our country in new ways,” said Trump in a 2023 video.
Son reportedly revised his “new city” plan to a smaller scale, according to the Journal, dropping the part about high-tech robotics and housing for workers. But the idea for industrial parks remains and would be paid for using Japanese investment dollars, which were committed in July as part of a trade deal with the United States. Tariffs on Japanese cars were dropped from 25% to 15% and Japan committed $550 billion of investment into U.S. industry.
The Trump administration reportedly wants to funnel that money into Son’s idea for Project Crystal Land and is apparently pitching partnerships with Japanese companies like TDK, Mitsubishi Electric, and Hitachi. Eventually, Son wants to build chip-manufacturing plants that could compete with the most advanced plants in Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan.
A photo posted to the White House Flickr page last month captured Son wearing a “4 More Years!” hat in the Oval Office while shaking hands with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. Son was on hand that day as President Trump signed the bill that reopened the government after a historically long shutdown, and Lutnick could be seen just behind the two men.
Lutnick, who has previously hyped the idea of building new factories dominated by robots, has been working with the Department of the Interior on using federal land for Son’s industrial parks, according to the Journal. Lutnick came under fire in April for suggesting any new jobs would primarily go to robots while American workers screwed in little screws for iPhones.
The idea for so-called new cities has a long history in 20th-century futurism, especially when it comes to testing out new technology. The most famous might be EPCOT, Walt Disney’s Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. The original plan was to build a real working city where new technologies in everything from communications to transportation could be tried with real people. But after Disney died in 1966, the plan morphed from a real city into a theme park.
The Journal cautions that Son’s plan may never get off the ground. The newspaper cites sources who claim that funding for the project could come as soon as the first quarter of 2026. But it also notes that SoftBank pledged $500 billion for the Stargate data center project in a big White House announcement back in January while standing next to Trump, Larry Ellison, and Sam Altman. That project has yet to actually happen and has mostly consisted of splashy announcements.
Another big hurdle might be the fact that successful businesses may not be interested in the project to build industrial parks here in the U.S. Taiwan’s TSMC has reportedly told Son they don’t want to participate. And just about everyone on Wall Street is currently nervous about the AI bubble potentially bursting. The entire U.S. economy seems to be propped up on a technology with plenty of hype but hasn’t shown a path to profitability anytime soon.
But who knows? Mainstream economists were all convinced that Trump’s tariffs, first announced on April 2, would devastate the economy. And while there have been some modest job losses and a slight rise in inflation, it’s nowhere near the apocalyptic scenarios that were envisioned. It’s entirely possible that Trump’s economy chugs along on fumes for years before it putters out. Or it could all come crashing down tomorrow. If you know the answer to that, you could stand to make some serious money in the stock market.
The problem, as always when predicting the future, is that nobody seems to know.