Looking for Trump’s $18 trillion
This week marks the one-year anniversary of “Liberation Day” and President Trump’s global tariff scheme. Earlier this year, President Trump defended his tariff strategy by touting that he has “secured commitments for more than $18 trillion, a number that is unfathomable to many.” The White House investment tracker claims a smaller $10.5 trillion in total “US and foreign investments.”
In a $30 trillion economy where total private investment runs around $5 trillion a year, an investment surge of $10 trillion to $18 trillion is not realistic.
Scale alone is reason for skepticism of the president’s claims, but so too is direction. Some sectors of the economy may expand due to protection, but that expansion comes at the expense of other sectors and overall productivity. Tariffs thus reduce economic output on net, and so they should shrink investment and the capital stock, not grow it.
Even giving the White House every benefit of the doubt, if investment had increased by trillions, it should be noticeable in broad macroeconomic statistics.
Start with total private nonresidential fixed investment, which excludes residential investment like owner-occupied homes and rental apartments, and focuses on business structures, equipment, and intellectual property products like software and R&D.
In 2025, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reports that the United States saw $4.25 trillion in investment across those categories, up from $4.02 trillion in 2024 nominally, for an increase of $228 billion or 5.6 percent. Comparing annual rates in Q4 2024 ($4.04 trillion) to Q4 2025 ($4.36 trillion) yields a similar result, nominally a $319 billion or 7.9 percent increase. In real terms, private fixed nonresidential investment was up about 4 percent year over year and 5.5 percent when comparing the fourth quarter annual rates.
But President Trump’s claims are usually about a specific subcategory of investment: foreign direct investment into the United States.
The BEA reports that foreign direct investment into the United States totaled $288.4 billion in 2025, down from 2024’s $292 billion, and lower than the nominal totals in 2023, 2022, and 2021 ($297 billion, $338 billion, and $406 billion).
Everywhere we look, President Trump’s $18 trillion is nowhere to be found.