To win Trump's deal backing, Bayer made a new $8B-plus pledge. But how new is it?

Bayer’s $66 billion Monsanto takeover has plenty of critics. But thanks to an $8 billion R&D pledge, it has one key backer: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.  On Tuesday, Bayer and Monsanto said that their respective CEOs—Werner Baumann and Hugh Grant—had a “very productive” meeting with Trump and his team, resulting in a pledge to promise $16 billion or more in agriculture R&D over the next six years, with at least half of that coming in the U.S. Analysts are skeptical that the companies' promises offer much in the way of new investment; after crunching some numbers and checking facts, Bernstein analysts don't think so. But Trump's ability to take credit for those promises can't hurt the companies' chances at winning antitrust approval for their controversial deal. Some of those pledges sound familiar to analysts, though—including Bernstein’s Jeremy Redenius, who told the news service that “St. Louis to remain the headquarters of the North American seeds business has been the plan from the start.” Redenius questioned the R&D vow, too, noting that, broken down, $16 billion over six years is about $2.7 billion per year—or what Bayer and Monsanto together spend in that field already. And half of it is likely already happening in the U.S., he figures, with Monsanto spending the majority of its annual $1.5 billion in its home country and Bayer chipping in some stateside R&D investments, too.