President Donald Trump’s Small Business Administration chief, Kelly Loeffler, heaped praise on him during this week’s Cabinet meeting — but she made a particularly outlandish economic claim that had experts doing a double-take.
“The $18 trillion you brought is creating an economic boom,” Loeffler said. “We will have 7 percent GDP growth. It’s probably being underestimated right now.”
Loeffler is presumably referring to the amount of foreign investment that other countries have pledged to make into the U.S. economy since Trump took office, a figure that never seems consistent and that various administration officials have valued anywhere between $10-20 trillion. In reality, these numbers are essentially guesses; the vast majority has not yet been invested, and some of it would have happened regardless of who was president.
Nonetheless, her insinuation that the U.S. economy is already being infused with trillions of dollars earned ridicule from commenters on social media.
“It’s giving North Korea,” wrote conservative Washington Examiner analyst Brad Polumbo. “There is no $18 trillion, and we are absolutely not going to have 7% GDP growth. Why debase yourself like this?”
“You have to completely economically illiterate to believe that there has been an $18 trillion influx of foreign investment,” wrote Jessica Reidl of the Brookings Institution. “(Which would have created 60% GDP growth and required filling 100 million new jobs out of the 7.5 million unemployed workers).”
“Future historians will tell fascinating stories about this administration coming down to a president, however ill-qualified for the job, being spoon fed bogus data and reports from sycophantic staff — leaving him totally blind to what’s actually happening in the country,” wrote author Joel Miller.
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