As voter dissatisfaction with the economy threatens Republicans in the midterms, President Donald Trump is touting billions in new investments as evidence that his policies are delivering prosperity.
The latest example came Wednesday in the Oval Office as Trump announced that South Korea would invest $54 billion in an Alaska pipeline and liquefied natural gas project.
Alaska is a state critical to Republicans’ efforts to retain control of the Senate, and the incumbent Republican, Sen. Dan Sullivan, stood next to the Resolute Desk and touted the ways the project will provide “low-cost energy” to Alaskans.
“It’s the biggest in the world, and he would call me constantly,” Trump said, praising Sullivan. “If the people of Alaska knew what I know, and I know the real facts, there wouldn’t even be a race.”
With relatively few tools to bring prices down in the short term, the White House has had to rely on efforts to convince voters that Trump’s policies will pay off over time. Trump, who revels in portraying himself as a dealmaker, has made frequent claims of massive foreign and corporate investments central to that argument.
Some of those investment claims have proved to be speculative, at best. Trump claims that he has secured $21 trillion in investment in the United States, even though the White House’s own list of deals totals $11.2 trillion. Many of those figures reflect announcements that foreign governments and companies have made about potential future investments; only a small fraction have actually been deployed.
The Alaska project is part of nearly $200 billion that the White House says South Korea has committed to invest in the U.S. to head off tariffs that Trump had threatened last year.
The South Korean government has said the Alaska project remains under review for commercial viability, according to a Korean news outlet.
Sullivan’s race against former congresswoman Mary Peltola, a Democrat, has been animated by voter concerns about the high cost of gasoline, diesel and groceries.
Sullivan has touted his track record of using his connections to national Republicans to bring federal aid to Alaska, while Peltola positions herself as a politician who could challenge the White House’s policies to make life more affordable.
Sullivan is among the Republicans who have recently called for a ban on export of diesel as a way of bringing down the cost at home. Diesel now averages $6.41 per gallon nationally, according to data from AAA but is considerably higher in his state. That proposal has been the subject of intense debate within the administration.
Trump said on Wednesday that he was “thinking about” a ban, but strongly suggested he would not do it. Energy experts have warned that while a ban could provide short-term relief to farmers and truckers, it could backfire and cause the price of gasoline and jet fuel to rise because of the impact it would have on refineries.
“It’s something that we think about and we talk about every day,” Trump said. “But it just seems that it would have a negative impact on gasoline, so that that would go up a little bit and diesel would come down a little bit. And we think we’re in a very good place.”
Trump also repeated his claim that prices would soon start declining.
“It’s going to start to come in,” he said.
Trump often dismisses the economic concerns that are top of mind for many voters, calling claims about affordability a hoax created by the Democrats.
As Trump increasingly confronts the reality that his party faces a poor political environment a month before the midterms, he is expected to take his investment pitch on the road — even in deep-red states that are considered friendly territory.
On Thursday, he is scheduled to visit Peterbilt Motors in Denton, Texas, where he plans to pitch the ways he says his policies have brought back manufacturing jobs. Texas, long a Republican stronghold, has emerged as another critical battleground state as the parties vie for control of the Senate.
Later that day, he plans to trumpet a multibillion-dollar investment in an aluminum smelter in Inola, Oklahoma. And on Friday, he is expected to highlight a multibillion-dollar bridge construction project in Mobile, Alabama, where he will host a rally.
But it’s unclear if the investment announcements will move the needle with voters. Even if the projects do move forward as the White House plans, they mostly won’t deliver tangible economic benefits in the weeks before the midterms.
At the same time, the administration has to some extent interfered with its own message by clawing back more than $800 million in congressionally approved spending across the government, prompting criticism from even some members of his own party, including Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is running in a tight reelection race.
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