Feb
6
2026

That's $18,000,000,000,000, Folks

President Trump had an op-ed published in Last Saturday's WSJ, claiming "Donald J. Trump: My Tariffs Have Brought America Back". (WSJ gifted link)

I didn't bother reading it then. But here's one of his claims:

At the same time, I have successfully wielded the tariff tool to secure colossal Investments in America, like no other country has ever seen before. By his own accounting, in four years, Joe Biden got less than $1 trillion of new Investment in the United States. In less than one year, we have secured commitments for more than $18 trillion, a number that is unfathomable to many.

At Cato, Alan Reynolds aims his shotgun at that fish in the barrel: Trump’s Eighteen Trillion Dollar Hoax.

What could it possibly mean to say that Trump “brought in” $18 trillion? That number is nearly as big as China’s GDP in an entire year. Where did it come from? Where has it gone?

If some fraction of this unseen $18 trillion that “Trump brought in” was already creating an economic boom, then why hasn’t anyone shown us the booming economic statistics for manufacturing, employment, construction, or foreign investment?

The mysterious $18 trillion boast of Trump loyalists cannot mean we are “bringing in” that much actual foreign direct investment (FDI). If it did, foreigners would have to acquire an extra $18 trillion in US dollars to finance all that new US plant and equipment in the USA—either by selling us much more than they buy from us (requiring much larger US trade deficits for many years) or by selling us huge amounts of their real or financial assets (convincing Americans to invest more abroad than they do at home).

More at the link, but you get the idea. Trump's claim is bullshit.

Trump's op-ed also says:

The Journal has charged repeatedly that tariffs are nothing but a “tax” on American consumers, which has proved to be totally false. Experience since Liberation Day has proved that this analysis is not only far too simplistic—it is absolutely wrong! The data shows that the burden, or “incidence,” of the tariffs has fallen overwhelmingly on foreign producers and middlemen, including large corporations that are not from the U.S. According to a recent study by the Harvard Business School, these groups are paying at least 80% of tariff costs.

That got the WSJ's Editorial Board to take exception: Are Trump’s Tariffs Winning?.

We published that claim because readers should know that’s what the President believes, but the paper he cites says something different. In an updated version released after Mr. Trump wrote, the authors note that the “retail pass-through” of the tariffs has been 24%—a measure of the extent to which a given tariff rate feeds through to consumer prices, given that the cost of the good at the border is only one part of the final price. This pass-through rate is higher than under Mr. Trump’s 2018-19 China tariffs.

But that doesn’t tell the full picture of how the tariff cost is distributed. The Harvard economists note in the same paragraph that U.S. consumers are bearing up to 43% of the tariff burden, with U.S. companies absorbing most of the rest. That aligns with other research, such as a recent paper from Germany’s Kiel Institute that found Americans pay 96% of the cost of tariffs. Foreign exporters either pass on the full cost of the tariffs to their U.S. customers, or they ship smaller quantities of goods.

Americans pay one way or the other—via higher prices or less choice. Mr. Trump admitted as much when he said last year that tariffs mean Americans might have to buy fewer dolls for their children at Christmas.

Again, Trump is spouting bullshit.

But what else is new?

Also of note:

  • Shut up, Junior. Christian Schneider goes full libertarian, and good for him: Government Shouldn't Dictate Nutrition. (archive.today link)

    He quotes some critics of the new "inverted" pyramid. I won't bother you with the details, because…

    Yet the nutritional experts’ argument over what belongs in the food pyramid obscures the real issue: Isn’t it moronic for the government to have a food pyramid?

    The idea that the federal government should play a role in determining the food we eat only serves to stroke the egos of those who believe nothing worthwhile happens in the world without bureaucratic approval. What types of diets best serve individual citizens is one of the most-studied topics in human history, and most of that analysis has been conducted by private actors. There are infinite apps, websites, chat rooms, TikTok videos, workout plans, and the like that will get you where you want to go on your fitness journey, all thankfully operating outside the walls of the Department of Health and Human Services.

    Christian goes on to observe that, in addition to being inappropriate for a free country, Uncle Stupid's dietary advice has a lousy track record.

    For the record: I got e-mail from Dr. Oz yesterday, nagging me to

    Boost Your Protein and Healthy Fats. Think eggs, seafood, red meat, dairy, beans, nuts, and seeds. Aim for 6-7 servings per day (based on a 2,000-2,200 daily calorie level). And remember to keep saturated fats under 10% of your daily calories.

    I am in awe of the sheer arrogance involved in demanding that I (and my fellow geezers) break out the paper, pens, and calculators to figure out whether they've gone over that 10% figure.

    So: you shut up too, Dr. Oz.

  • No actual elephants were harmed in getting them in that room. Eric Berger usually does straight reporting on space at Ars Technica, but he recently seemed to have lost patience: NASA finally acknowledges the elephant in the room with the SLS rocket.

    The Space Launch System rocket program is now a decade and a half old, and it continues to be dominated by two unfortunate traits: It is expensive, and it is slow.

    The massive rocket and its convoluted ground systems, so necessary to baby and cajole the booster’s prickly hydrogen propellant on board, have cost US taxpayers in excess of $30 billion to date. And even as it reaches maturity, the rocket is going nowhere fast.

    Eric recalls the dismal history of the unmanned Artemis I mission, plagued with multiple delays. And that was more than three years ago.

    Eric's analysis is worth reading in full, and so is James Meigs, in the WSJ's Free Expression newsletter: Artemis II Shows Why Private Spaceflight Should Lead the Way. (WSJ gifted link)

    While Elon Musk’s SpaceX has slashed launch costs by landing and reusing rocket boosters, SLS remains an old-school, expendable system; only the capsule survives each flight. No wonder NASA’s Office of Inspector General estimates this white elephant will cost a staggering $4.1 billion per mission. So, once again, NASA is saddled with a spaceflight system too expensive to fly routinely.

    New NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman knows all this. As a self-made entrepreneur and a veteran of two self-funded SpaceX flights, he’s an advocate for NASA’s commercial approach—and for retiring SLS. In his first confirmation hearing, Mr. Isaacman gently told the senators that SLS wasn’t “the long-term way to get to and from the moon and Mars with great frequency.” In a compromise, he suggested NASA should use the two existing SLS rockets to carry the Artemis II and Artemis III, which aims to put a crew on the lunar surface. After that, the agency should move on. The senators later approved Mr. Isaacson’s nomination. But they pushed back on retiring SLS, instead adding funding to build more SLS rockets to last year’s Big Beautiful Bill.

    Finally, Viking Pundit comments from personal experience: Don't light this candle

    I believe I mentioned this before but I briefly worked as a project engineer on the Orion program and it was - by far - the worst job I've ever had. Whatever excitement of "working for NASA" was washed away in a sclerotic bureaucracy that throttled any real progress. There were regular newsletters circulated that heralded how NASA programs were spread over every state in the Union which should tell you what you need to know: this is a jobs program, not a space program.

    The SLS/Orion program is still dependent upon Space Shuttle technology from over 40 years ago. Why? Because some Congressman didn't want to see a NASA subcontractor in his/her district lose that sweet federal money. This is all part of the grift along with the endless delays. There are never any consequences for delay so why not keep your job going? These programs achieve a kind of half-life behavior where progress slows the closer you get to the finish line.

    I hope and pray I'm wrong, but I fear this Artemis launch will result in cataclysm`

    When (or if) Artemis II launches, I'll be watching and hoping for the best. But like the VP, fearing the worst.