Defense companies predict just hundreds of new US jobs from Saudi arms sale: report

President Trump’s $110 billion arms deal package with Saudi Arabia – a sale he has said in recent weeks would create 500,000 new defense jobs – is estimated to produce only hundreds of new positions at best at the five major U.S. defense firms, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

Internal Lockheed Martin documents seen by the news service predict that the deal would create fewer than 1,000 positions at the defense giant, which could potentially deliver about $28 billion of equipment as part of the larger sale.

{mosads}Instead, defense companies are predicting there will be a more significant growth in Saudi Arabian jobs with only small adds to the U.S. workforce.

Lockheed, for example, predicts the sale could create almost 10,000 new jobs in Saudi Arabia. Its 18,000 existing U.S. workers would only be sustained, but that hinges on all promised deals following through.

Raytheon, meanwhile, could sustain about 10,000 U.S. jobs, with only a small percentage of new jobs created if the Saudi order was completed.

Should the full deal go through, only 20,000 to 40,000 current U.S. workers could be involved in producing the Saudi equipment, and only 500 new jobs could be created, according to documents seen by Reuters.

The five biggest U.S. defense companies, which make nearly every item in the Saudi package, now sustain roughly 383,000 workers, according to Reuters.

Lockheed would not comment on the deal. Raytheon Chief Financial Officer Toby O’Brien would only say that hiring overall is growing.

Trump in recent weeks has made declarations that the $110 billion Saudi package — announced in May 2017 – would create hundreds of thousands of new positions, a figure that has been met with doubts.

When he first announced the deal, Trump said the sales would potentially create “tens of thousands of new jobs in the United States,” a claim backed by the State Department.

But earlier this month, that number began to jump, to 450,000, then 500,000, then 600,000. It hit 1 million jobs last week.

“I don’t want to lose a million jobs. I don’t want to lose a $110 billion in terms of investment. But it’s really $450 billion if you include other than military. So that’s very important,” Trump told reporters Oct. 22.

There is no publicly available data to back up Trump’s claims, and so far Saudi Arabia has only signed solid agreements for $14.5 billion in sales.

Trump’s insistence of the impact of the sale has grown as the administration comes under fire for its reluctance in penalizing the Saudis for the Oct. 2 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.