Anthony Pratt pledges $8 billion for US as he visits Trump at White House
Washington: Australian packaging magnate Anthony Pratt, whom Donald Trump once branded a 'red-haired weirdo', has pledged to invest billions in American manufacturing as he visits the US president at the White House.
Pratt said the planned $US5 billion ($7.82 billion) investment would create 5000 manufacturing jobs across the US in the rust-belt states of Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and in Arizona in the southwest.
'To make America great again we need to make in America again,' he said. 'That's why I'm proud to support the president's call to reindustrialise America and again make the US the manufacturing powerhouse of the world'.
The Visy and Pratt Industries chairman is among several business leaders due to attend an event with Trump at the White House on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) as the president marks the first 100 days of his second term.
Pratt is a permanent US resident and has based himself in New York since last year. Pratt Industries has 70 US factories making recycled paper and cardboard boxes for customers such as Walmart, Home Depot and the US Postal Service.
The 65-year-old, originally from Melbourne, has cultivated a relationship with the president and became a member of his Mar-a-lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
As part of the investigation into Trump's handling of classified documents, it was claimed that Trump shared potentially classified information about America's nuclear submarine fleet with Pratt during conversations at Mar-a-lago in April 2021.
The information reportedly included the number of nuclear warheads carried by the boats and how close they could get to Russian counterparts without detection. When the claims were published in 2023, Trump called it 'fake news' and said he never discussed submarines with 'a red-haired weirdo from Australia'.
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