The United States’ gross domestic product is about $30 trillion—roughly a quarter of the world’s total. China’s second, with a GDP of around $19 trillion, followed by a steep drop: Germany at $5 trillion, Japan at $4.3 trillion, and India at $4.1 trillion. Every other nation is below $4 trillion.
So when Trump boasts that he’s secured $17 trillion in domestic investment, it doesn’t pass the smell test. The world doesn’t have that kind of capital sitting around and waiting to be handed to a country that’s spent the past nine months antagonizing its trading partners.
But that doesn’t stop Trump from claiming it.
“‘We have over $17 trillion being invested now in the United States,’ Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday,” reported CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale. “On Friday, he said he thought the figure had ‘just cracked $18 trillion.’”
What’s funny is that Trump’s White House claims the number is $8.8 trillion—and even that’s garbage.
When you break down the supposed sources of those investments, it’s immediately clear that none of this is real money or firm commitments. It’s smoke and mirrors—numbers invented for press releases, not grounded in signed deals or measurable economic activity.
President Donald Trump, right, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in late July.
For instance, the White House claims $600 billion from the European Union, even though no one—on either side—believes that’s an actual commitment. It’s a number representing a hypothetical private investment that may or may not happen someday.
Another $600 billion supposedly comes from the Saudis, but that’s not investment, either. It’s a vague figure combining “investments and trade.” The same sleight of hand appears with the claimed $500 billion from India, which is a bilateral trade goal—and an estimate issued before Trump’s hostility pushed India closer to China. And Qatar’s $1.2 trillion? Also trade, not investment.
The United Arab Emirates supposedly pledged a $1.4 trillion investment, even though its national GDP is less than half of that.
Japan’s alleged $1 trillion investment shrinks to $550 billion when you look at the real agreement—and that’s mostly loans and guarantees, not cash. And South Korea’s supposed $450 billion turns out to be $350 billion, promised long before the fiasco at Hyundai’s Georgia plant, where hundreds of Korean nationals were detained and deported.
Then there’s over a trillion dollars’ worth of corporate commitments—like Apple—that were no doubt going to happen regardless of who sat in the Oval Office. Apple blogger John Gruber has noted that the company invested just about as much in expanding its U.S. operations under President Joe Biden as it did under Trump.
When CNN asked the White House to explain these discrepancies, officials didn’t even try. They attacked Dale for “pointless and pedantic nitpicking,” claiming the media would be “beclowned” when the promised investments finally materialize.
FILE – Buildings are reflected behind the logo at an Apple Store, in downtown Chicago, in 2017.
That’s not an argument. It’s a tantrum. There are certainly clowns involved in this episode, but none of them are at CNN.
The truth is, these supposed investment announcements were never serious. It’s doubtful that even Trump believes they’re real. He just wants something to brag about—some big, round number to throw around on camera—and he doesn’t care whether those promises are backed by anything tangible.
World leaders figured this out years ago. They learned that the easiest way to get Trump to back off his foreign policy was to flatter him. Offer a headline-friendly “deal,” let him tout some imaginary investment number, and he’ll walk away thinking he’s won. It’s a fantasy dressed up as a win. A New York Times subhead put it bluntly: “U.S. trading partners are committing to buy more gas than they need or than the U.S. can produce, at least in the short term.”
We’ve seen this movie before. In Trump’s first term, China supposedly agreed to buy $200 billion of additional U.S. energy by the end of 2021. That never happened.
“The scale of the delusion [of recent trade announcements] probably exceeds what Trump and China agreed in their … trade deal in December 2019,” wrote Reuters columnist Clyde Russell. “The reality is that China never even came close to buying that level, and its imports of U.S. energy didn’t even reach what they were before Trump launched his first trade war in 2017.”
China played Trump then, and the rest of the world is playing him now. But even after being humiliated on the global stage for years, he still can’t resist inflating his own fantasies into something even more absurd.
Who’s the clown now?
