WASHINGTON — To listen to Donald Trump, within the not-quite-four months since he regained the presidency, he has introduced some $14 trillion in new funding into the nation, with $4 trillion from his just-concluded journey 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 advised reporters as Air Drive One was leaving the United Arab Emirates on Friday, attributing all the brand new investments to his election. “They’re doing work that wouldn’t have been available to them, except for Nov. 5.”
The determine appears unbelievable — on condition that the nation’s whole gross home product is simply about $29 trillion — and economists say there’s a motive for that. It’s unbelievable as a result of it’s not remotely true.
“No,” College of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers mentioned when requested if Trump’s assertions are probably right. “That’s the answer.”
The White Home press workplace didn’t reply to HuffPost’s request for a full listing of the investments totaling the $14 trillion, nor one for the listing of these making up $8 trillion when Trump was claiming that quantity simply two weeks in the past.
Trump, nonetheless, has been boasting for months that his return to workplace has introduced in lots of trillions of {dollars} of investments that in any other case wouldn’t have occurred.
“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 mentioned on Jan. 21, the day after his inauguration.
Waleed Zein/Anadolu through Getty Photographs
By April 2, the day he introduced his “Liberation Day” tariffs that despatched monetary markets into turmoil, that whole had doubled. “So far, it looks like we’re going to have about $6 trillion of investments,” he mentioned.
The quantity saved climbing over current weeks to $8 trillion, $9 trillion and at last $10 trillion within the days earlier than he left on his first prolonged international journey. “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 mentioned Monday.
At a photograph alternative with enterprise leaders in Qatar on Thursday, Trump bragged in regards to the whole he may have introduced in from that nation, 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,” mentioned Jason Furman, a prime financial adviser within the Obama White Home and now an economics professor at Harvard College. “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 Home web site, certainly, doesn’t present a quantity anyplace close to $14 trillion and even $10 trillion.
The web site’s “Trump Effect” web page that tracks “major investment announcements” that had been “made possible by President Trump’s leadership” lists pages of figures, together with $1.2 trillion from Qatar, $500 billion from Apple, and $11 billion from Gilead Sciences clear all the way down to $6 million from LGM Pharma. When totaled, they arrive to $3,928,720,700,000. Even when the $200 billion in new funding claimed from the Emirates go to is added to that, it nonetheless quantities to solely $4.1 trillion — about $10 trillion in need 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 mentioned. “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 mentioned that even the investments listed don’t imply that Trump had something to do with them and even that they’re correct.
“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 mentioned.
That Trump would exaggerate, or just make issues up, isn’t a shock. He has been famously reckless with the reality for his whole grownup life — generally as a result of he doesn’t know what’s right and doesn’t care, and different instances as a result of he is aware of the reality and consciously lies anyway.
Wolfers mentioned Trump additionally has the benefit that most individuals don’t totally comprehend massive numbers, making it simple to confuse them with grandiose statements.
“The problem is the word million, billion and trillion all sound similar,” he mentioned. “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?”
