President Donald Trump’s economic policies have only generated a fraction of the $21 trillion in U.S. investments that the president regularly touts.
Trump claims to have launched a “Golden Age” for the U.S. and often brags about generating “trillions of dollars” in investment thanks to his sweeping tariff policy and deals made during his many trips abroad.
If true, the latest $21 trillion figure Trump has landed on would represent almost 70 percent of the United States’ annual economic output.
It would exceed the New Deal and the 19th-century railroad boom, and would represent the largest capital-spending explosion in postwar U.S. history, according to a new analysis by Bloomberg.
The problem, though, is that the number appears to be mostly a fantasy.
The White House’s “Trump Effect” website details just $9.6 trillion in “total U.S. and foreign investments.” Of those, hundreds of billions represent company pledges for purchases, not investments, or contradict other public statements, according to the Bloomberg analysis.
Another $2.3 trillion worth of items listed on the site are not investments but rather agreements to buy natural gas or expand bilateral trade, Bloomberg found after reviewing the 137 projects listed.
That leaves just $7 trillion in investments, but even those are shaky. About half are private investments, while half are sovereign commitments from foreign countries.
Out of $3.5 trillion in investment pledges from other countries, just $128 billion have been allocated to specific projects. Another $2.5 trillion take the form of amorphous pledges.
On the private investment side, an incredible $2.9 trillion is tied to AI-related infrastructure like data centers.
Many of the projects also began during the Biden years, Reuters reported earlier this year. The Bloomberg analysis confirmed that the boom Trump has promised relies on semiconductor and green energy projects that began under the previous administration.
White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai declined to respond to detailed questions from Bloomberg, saying Trump’s “dealmaking” had secured trillions of dollars in investments to make and hire in the U.S., and to create commercial opportunities for U.S. companies, including export opportunities.
“No amount of media nitpicking is going to change these facts,” he said.
The Daily Beast has also reached out for comment.
Both companies and foreign officials have discovered that the Trump administration is responsive to big, splashy investments pledges, even if they are light on details, Bloomberg reported.
