by Dean Baker
Counterpunch.org, November 13, 2025
Excerpt…
More importantly, these are vague commitments of funds to be invested in the United States. Much — perhaps most — of the money would have been invested here anyhow. Furthermore, it is not money going to the US government; it is money going to build factories, research centers, or retail outlets in various places around the country.
This distinction should be pretty obvious to anyone, but apparently Trump has gotten into his head that some vastly inflated sum from these commitments is actually coming into the US Treasury. This is a rather pathetic confusion for a US president, but that’s actually the less tragic part of the story.
The more tragic part is that none of Trump’s aides is able to set him straight. People like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent or National Economic Advisor Kevin Hassett may not be brilliant intellects, but they know that Trump does not have trillions of dollars from foreign countries to play with, and that we are still running deficits that would ordinarily be considered very large. But they are too scared of Donald Trump to explain this to him. The question is whether they will allow Trump to make the deficits $600 billion larger based on Trump’s belief in money that is not there.
This is not the first time Trump has based his policies on an imaginary world. His whole immigration policy is based on claims that Biden let in 20 million criminals and people released from mental hospitals. This hugely exaggerates the number of people who entered the country, and nearly all of them came here to work, not collect government benefits for which they are mostly ineligible. Very few had criminal records, and most of those were already in the deportation process.
But big money types mostly aren’t bothered by Trump’s wrongheaded policies, except the relatively small number of businesses that rely on undocumented workers. The big money types do get bothered by very large deficits.
Continues…
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/11/13/388958/
PS: Great thinks mind a likes.
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