Trump Wildly Claims He’s Brought in $17 Trillion In Foreign Investment — Nearly the GDP of China
President Donald Trump claimed on Tuesday that the U.S. is taking in “almost $17 trillion of investment” from foreign countries, which would almost equal the entire GDP of China — 18.7 trillion dollars in 2024.
“We have the best economy. We have a very, very important decision being made by the Supreme Court because our country is the richest, the strongest, the most powerful. But if for some reason some liberal court—I’m talking about the court that just ruled where even an Obama judge voted in favor of us, which I gave him a compliment yesterday,” Trump said as he went on a tangent while answering questions in the Oval Office on Tuesday.
“As you know, I said that took great courage, but it’s a liberal court. And it’s going up to the Supreme Court, who I think have been incredible people. I think they’ve made very wise decisions. But the tariff question, because without the tariffs, this country is in serious, serious trouble,” Trump continued, repeating claims he made over the weekend when an appeals court shot down his sweeping global tariffs.
“We’ve taken in, almost $17 trillion of investment is coming in. Most of it is coming because of tariffs,” Trump added, continuing:
And if for some reason… Uh… Somebody wanted to be politically correct, I actually think it’s un-politically correct. I think politically correct is to approve it because there’s nothing so popular as what’s happened to our country.
Our country is doing so well, but uh… We had a liberal court gave us a very shocking ruling, and that ruling is basically saying that the trillions of dollars that are pouring into our country, putting us in a position like no country is anywhere in the world, that they’d like to see us take it away. By the way, a lot of the people behind that lawsuit, that particular, are from foreign countries.
Inaccurate numbers coming out of the Trump White House sparked widespread mockery in recent days. Over the weekend, the Trump White House posted to social media that it had taken in a whopping “$8 trillion in tariff revenue.”
Experts like the non-partisan Tax Foundation’s Erica York replied to the claim by adding context, “How did they already get $8 trillion in tariff revenue when goods imports are about $3 trillion a year?”
Trump’s claim of $17 trillion in foreign investment, even including tariff revenue, is wildly inaccurate on its face – especially given the fact that the entire global GDP for 2024 was around $110 trillion dollars (with $29 trillion coming from the US). Trump’s claim would mean that the rest of the world has handed over over 21% of its entire economic value to the U.S. since he has taken office.
The conservative Manhattan Institute’s Jessica Reidl shot down some other claims the Trump White House made over the weekend:
Today alone, the White House has claimed:
-$8 trillion in new tariff revenue.
-$4 trillion in net deficit reduction.
-$5 trillion in new business investment.
-Hundreds of thousands of jobs from these investments.
-Record low gas prices.
Each claim is completely, 100%, made-up.
Trump has increased government revenue on tariffs, but nowhere on the scale he has claimed. Forbes reported at the end of August that the U.S. “has collected $142 billion from tariff revenue so far this fiscal year, which ends in September, according to Treasury Department data released earlier this month.” Trump’s tariffs have increased annual customs duties by some 273%, according to Forbes.
