WASHINGTON — To hear Donald Trump, in the not-quite-four months since he regained the presidency, he has brought some $14 trillion in new investment into the country, with $4 trillion from his just-concluded trip to the Arabian Peninsula alone.
“The jobs and money coming into our country, there’s never been anything like it. You see that the companies are American-based companies,” Trump told reporters as Air Force One was leaving the United Arab Emirates on Friday, attributing all the new investments to his election. “They’re doing work that wouldn’t have been available to them, except for Nov. 5.”
The figure seems incredible — given that the nation’s entire gross domestic product is only about $29 trillion — and economists say there is a reason for that. It is incredible because it’s not remotely true.
“No,” University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers said when asked if Trump’s assertions are possibly correct. “That’s the answer.”
The White House press office did not respond to HuffPost’s request for a full list of the investments totaling the $14 trillion, nor one for the list of those making up $8 trillion when Trump was claiming that amount just two weeks ago.
Trump, nevertheless, has been boasting for months that his return to office has brought in many trillions of dollars of investments that otherwise would not have happened.
“Before the end of my first full business day in Washington, in the White House, we’ve already secured nearly $3 trillion of new investments in the United States,” he said on Jan. 21, the day after his inauguration.
President Donald Trump attends the U.S.-U.A.E. Business Council in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on Friday. Waleed Zein/Anadolu via Getty Images
By April 2, the day he announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs that sent financial markets into turmoil, that total had doubled. “So far, it looks like we’re going to have about $6 trillion of investments,” he said.
The number kept climbing over recent weeks to $8 trillion, $9 trillion and finally $10 trillion in the days before he left on his first extended foreign trip. “Other administrations haven’t had $1 trillion over a four-year period, even over an eight-year period. We have over $10 trillion committed in one form or the other over two months,” he said Monday.
At a photo opportunity with business leaders in Qatar on Thursday, Trump bragged about the total he will have brought in from that country, Saudi Arabia and the UAE over the course of the week: “It could be a total of $3.5 trillion, $4 trillion, just in this four or five days.”
“That’s nuts and baseless,” said Jason Furman, a top economic adviser in the Obama White House and now an economics professor at Harvard University. “I doubt the press releases even add up to that. But, regardless, press releases are a terrible way to determine the investment or the impact of his policies on it.”
Trump’s White House website, indeed, does not show a number anywhere near $14 trillion or even $10 trillion.
The website’s “Trump Effect” page that tracks “major investment announcements” that were “made possible by President Trump’s leadership” lists pages of figures, including $1.2 trillion from Qatar, $500 billion from Apple, and $11 billion from Gilead Sciences clear down to $6 million from LGM Pharma. When totaled, they come to $3,928,720,700,000. Even if the $200 billion in new investment claimed from the Emirates visit is added to that, it still amounts to only $4.1 trillion — about $10 trillion short of Trump’s claims.
“I have a Ph.D. in economics and I can tell you that $4.1 trillion is less than $14 trillion,” Wolfers said. “If you want, I can check with two more Ph.D.s in economics in the house right now to see if I’m right.”
He said that even the investments listed do not mean that Trump had anything to do with them or even that they are accurate.
“Trump has claimed a $1.2 trillion investment deal from Qatar. Qatar’s annual GDP is a bit less than $250 billion per year. So he’s claiming an investment that would require every dollar every Qatari earned over the next five years,” Wolfers said.
That Trump would exaggerate, or simply make things up, is not a surprise. He has been famously reckless with the truth for his entire adult life — sometimes because he doesn’t know what is correct and doesn’t care, and other times because he knows the truth and consciously lies anyway.
Wolfers said Trump also has the advantage that most people do not fully comprehend large numbers, making it easy to confuse them with grandiose statements.
“The problem is the word million, billion and trillion all sound similar,” he said. “So my realistic answer is that he’s a known liar. … I can also show you that he’s a lazy liar. So if your investment announcement is full of lazy lies, what part of it should we infer is true?”