A website set up by the White House to brag about corporate investments under Trump appears to take credit for over $1 trillion of deals initiated by the Biden administration.
Just hours after taking office in January, President Trump boasted about attracting $3 trillion worth of corporate investments to the U.S. Since then, Trump has claimed that number has swelled to over $14 trillion - Nearly half of the country’s entire annual GDP.
The White House set up a website to track these investments, which it has labelled “The Trump Effect.” But a study from Reuters has revealed that of the $2.6 trillion in investments listed on the site—already significantly below Trump’s vastly inflated estimate—nearly half of them originate from deals and initiatives put into place by Joe Biden.
At least eight of the projects listed on the page, totaling around $1.3 trillion , had already been announced prior to Trump’s inauguration, Reuters reports, while another two had been boosted by domestic spending initiatives put into place by the Biden administration.
Swiss drug company Roche, which is listed on the website as investing $50 billion into U.S.-based manufacturing and research and development, also recently warned that its investment was being threatened by Trump’s plans to equalize domestic and international drug prices.
Amongst the deals touted by the website include $900 million CHIPS and Science Act—a bipartisan bill passed by Biden which Trump has previously derided as a “horrible, horrible thing.”
Other examples include a $5.8 billion Louisiana steel plant from Hyundai, added to Trump’s list in March, which was actually finalized in December 2024 after a nationwide search. A $366 million LEGO distribution center in Virginia, touted in May, was in negotiations with state officials as early as 2022, while Chobani’s $1.2 billion New York plant was in discussions with the state in May 2023, well before Trump’s presidency.
When asked about taking credit for Biden-era deals and policies, a White House spokesperson claimed the final decisions were undertaken during Trump’s tenure, and that the president’s economic policies were responsible for triggering investment.
“President Trump is the greatest closer in modern history, and his leadership and policies are a critical catalyst converting hypothetical discussions into firm investment commitments and ground being broken for new plants and offices,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told the Daily Beast in a statement.
“The Trump administration is working hand-in-glove with industry leaders to restore American Greatness, and business leaders being forthright to credit the President’s leadership and policies reflects how that partnership has locked in trillions of dollars in historic investments for the American people.”
Some of the other “new” investments also appear to reflect normal corporate operations rather than a Trump-driven boom. Apple’s pledge to spend $500 billion over five years was seized on by Trump as proof the tech giant had “faith in what we are doing,” but the expenditure also aligns with its historical capital expenditures, analysts say.
“For Apple, most of this would have happened regardless of who’s president,” Dan Ives, a senior equity analyst with Wedbush Securities, told Reuters.
Meanwhile, a massive $500 billion AI data center plan in collaboration with OpenAI, Japanese tech giant SoftBank and software firm Oracle is still in the early stages, with no concrete plans or locations beyond a promise to spend $100 billion “immediately” back in January.
