In states, tariffs aren't yet producing the surge of foreign investment Trump is promising
Source: Politico
05/18/2025 07:00 AM EDT
President Donald Trump has claimed his surge of new tariffs will produce trillions of dollars of foreign investments in the U.S. economy. But some of the people working to lure those investments to U.S. cities and states say they’re not seeing the investment boom, at least not so far. To the contrary, economic development officials and lawmakers from several states say that the uncertainty fueled by Trump’s on-again, off-again trade wars is keeping many foreign businesses from pouring money into the U.S. market right now. And it signals the uneven impact the tariffs are having on reshoring American manufacturing — Trump’s stated goal for raising rates to the highest levels in a century.
“One of our contacts described it to me as driving a car in the fog,” Lee Lilley, North Carolina’s Commerce Secretary, said in an interview Tuesday at the Commerce Department’s SelectUSA Summit, an annual conference aimed at promoting foreign investment in the U.S. “You’re driving along, the fog descends, you slow the car down. Depending on how bad the fog is, you might pull the car over and turn on the blinkers. And we feel like we’re in that space a little bit.” Buffeted by news of companies raising prices as a result of the president’s dramatic tariff increases, the Trump administration has made economic development pledges a centerpiece of its messaging strategy.
As businesses across the country fret over the administration’s global trade war, the White House has responded by releasing a running list of billion-dollar commitments from major companies, a sign, the president and his aides argue, that his economic strategy is working by forcing more companies to build their products in the U.S. “There’s never been anything like what’s happening right now to the United States, I can tell you. Nothing,” Trump said at a roundtable in the United Arab Emirates, part of a multi-day swing through the Middle East where the president touted a slew of new foreign investments.
He claimed that, as a result, the U.S. is headed toward $12 trillion in investments since he took office. “There’s never been anything like it. We’re at a level that no country has seen.” The White House, however, is indiscriminate about what announcements it claims come from “the Trump effect.” Some have been in the works for years before they are announced. Others are in line with what the company would have invested, regardless of the tariffs. Some are inflated, adding previous investments to new pledges.
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/18/trump-foreign-investments-00355202
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