But the figure, compiled from trade commitments from foreign countries and U.S. companies, remains far below the total claimed by Trump himself, who has said the United States surpassed $17 trillion in investments and set expectations that the country will reach $21 trillion in one year.

“The United States is, right now, the hottest country in the world,” Trump told Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman earlier this month. “And between the tariffs and the election, Nov. 5 election, we’ve done things that nobody can believe. Twenty-one trillion dollars will be the amount invested in the United States, or committed to invest, in one year. So, I’m here nine months, we’re up to almost $18 trillion.”

The president has repeatedly announced several lofty economic proposals in the first year of his second term, including his $1 million “gold card” visa program and 50-year mortgage plan. The gold card program was originally floated as a way to increase revenue, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has projected sales will reach $100 billion.

Still, tariffs have been a cornerstone of Trump’s agenda, with the president often leveraging them as part of his trade negotiations. But based on public information and announced agreements, it is unclear where Trump is drawing his $17 trillion figure from.

Alex Durante, a senior economist at the Tax Foundation, said the investment figure is “not very realistic,” even when accounting for the $21 trillion to be paid over several years.

Tad DeHaven, a policy analyst with the Cato Institute, called it “nonsensical” during an interview with the Washington Examiner.

“The rule of thumb as a policy analyst is to be professional with these sorts of things,” DeHaven said. “It’s difficult because it’s nonsensical, and I’m not being uncharitable here when I say that the president likes to make things up, and he likes to make up numbers, and it’s part of the sales job. It’s part of the personality that the man brings to the Oval Office, and the $21 trillion figure is just, it exists in Donald Trump’s mind, and that’s the extent of it.”

The $9.6 trillion claimed by the White House is already $7.4 trillion less than what Trump publicly states. However, a Bloomberg analysis found that only $7 trillion constitutes actual investments.

The art of the deal

The investments include $1.4 trillion from the United Arab Emirates over 10 years, $1.2 trillion from Qatar, and $1 trillion from Japan, as well as investments from tech companies such as Apple, worth $600 billion, and Nvidia, worth $500 billion.

The fine print of these agreements showcases a more complicated picture. The pledge from the UAE would be more than double the country’s own gross domestic product, making it unclear how such an agreement would be fulfilled.

The U.S. agreement with Qatar, meanwhile, is to generate $1.2 trillion in “economic exchange” between the two countries, rather than for Qatar to invest the entirety in the U.S. itself.

An investment listed from “EU Firms” for $600 billion appears to be a projection, rather than an actual commitment, with a breakdown of the deal from the European Union stating that unspecified EU-based companies have “expressed interest” in investing at least $600 billion by 2029.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner. However, White House spokesman Kush Desai told Bloomberg that “President Trump’s dealmaking has secured trillions in investments to make and hire in America, trillions in commercial opportunities for American companies, and trillions in new export opportunities.”

“No amount of media nitpicking is going to change these facts,” Desai said.

The deals, which are not codified by Congress, are also more frameworks for agreements and are not legally binding.

“These are promises to invest,” Durante told the Washington Examiner. “They’re not necessarily part of any kind of formal deals. I mean, they’re almost like handshake deals, right? They haven’t been ratified or approved by Congress or signed into law.”

National Foreign Trade Council President Jake Colvin echoed this sentiment during an interview with NPR, saying the deals are “political agreements, rather than legal ones.”

When looked at closer, the total projected by the White House also includes investments that were, at least partially, announced under the Biden administration, including a $200 billion investment from tech company Micron, of which up to $100 billion of that was pledged as part of former President Joe Biden’s CHIPS and Science Act.

Another investment, from GlobalFoundries, a computer chipmaker, is listed for $16 billion on the White House website. The company previously announced $13 billion of that over the next decade during Biden’s administration.

Several deals struck by Trump have resulted in lowered tariff rates for foreign countries as part of negotiations.

“They know that to get something they want, or in the case of the two countries, to limit the damage,” DeHaven said. “You flatter the president of the United States. You give him some sort of figure, some sort of number, that he can go to the press and say, ‘Look what I just did, art of the deal.’”

Still, it remains to be seen whether they will be fulfilled in the long term, with DeHaven pointing to an investment Trump touted during his first term with Taiwan electronics manufacturer Foxconn to build a $10 billion factory in Wisconsin. This project ended up significantly reduced.

“Like a lot of the policies of this administration, the devil can be in the details, and in fairness to the president, he’s certainly not the first politician to wave around headlines of investments and such, and then these things don’t pan out,” DeHaven said.

Not enough tariff money to go around

Trump has floated several possible uses for the increased revenue, including $2,000 rebate checks, relief for farmers, and paying down the federal debt.

A relief bill for farmers is expected to range from $10 billion to $14 billion, according to reports, though a formal plan has yet to be released by the administration, as the White House looks to ease pressures created by tariffs on farmers. The federal debt, meanwhile, sits at over $38 trillion.

But for 2025 up to October, raw data for tariff revenue only equals $206 billion. The Tax Foundation projects that even the cheapest rebate program option, limited to tax filers and spouses only with a hard income cutoff at $100,000, would cost nearly $279.8 billion.

The most expensive option, which would have a 5% phaseout rate, dependent on filing status, would cost $606.8 billion, according to the foundation’s projections.

Based on the foundation’s estimates, there would not be enough money raised from tariffs alone to send out $2,000 rebate checks to the public, let alone give relief to farmers as proposed by Trump, while also paying down the national debt.

“This is well below what the administration, you know, had claimed from the outset,” Durante said. “So I think even there that they are overpromising and underdelivering.”

Proposals from Trump on uses for the tariff revenue come alongside economic concerns over rising prices, as inflation has continued to plague him.

Even as the president has claimed that under his administration, “inflation is almost nonexistent,” consumer prices increased at an annual rate of 3% in September, an increase from 2.9% in August, according to data from the Labor Department. The data also showed grocery prices are 2.7% higher than they were in September 2024, and gas prices increased by 4.1% from the previous month.

But despite the economic data, Trump has continued to claim that prices have fallen, saying on Nov. 6 that “every price is down.” A day later, he said that “prices are down under the Trump administration, and they’re down substantially.”

Ahead of Thanksgiving, on Tuesday, during the annual turkey pardon, Trump asserted that “Walmart announced that the cost of their standard Thanksgiving meal is 25% lower than just one year ago. That’s a big deal. According to the USDA, the price of Thanksgiving turkey is down 33% from its Biden-era highs. Potatoes are down 13%; ham is down 15% compared to last Thanksgiving.”

HOW ALASKA BECAME CENTRAL TO TRUMP’S INTERNATIONAL TRADE POLICY

Thanksgiving costs, in reality, were a mixed bag. Trump’s touting of Walmart’s Thanksgiving package omits that the bundle is smaller than last year’s, containing 23 items compared to 29 in 2024.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, which also collects pricing data, found that there was a 5% decrease in Thanksgiving costs this year, but some individual items did increase as well. The AFBF found turkey was down 16.3%, while a gallon of whole milk was up 16.3%. A one-pound veggie tray was up 61.3%, and three pounds of sweet potatoes were up 37%.