At President Trump’s most recent Cabinet meeting, Kelly Loeffler, the director of the Small Business Administration, praised the President and claimed: “The $18 trillion you brought is creating an economic boom. We will have 7% GDP growth. It’s probably being underestimated right now.”
Conservative economist Jessica Riedl blasted Loeffler’s claims as fantasy, calling out the SBA chief for an assessment utterly divorced from reality.
Riedl wrote on social media: “You have to [be] completely economically illiterate to believe that there has been an $18 trillion influx of foreign investment. (Which would have created 60% GDP growth and required filling 100 million new jobs out of the 7.5 million unemployed workers).”
Riedl, whose deep resume includes stints as the chief economist to Republican Ohio Senator Rob Portman, staff director of the U.S. Senate Finance Subcommittee on Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Growth, lead research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and director of budget and spending policy for Marco Rubio‘s 2016 presidential campaign, didn’t address Loeffler’s claim that current GDP was being “underestimated,” as even Loeffler’s “7%” target is still orders of magnitude less than what Riedl says $18 trillion would really mean.
[NOTE: CBS News reports U.S. GDP growth projections for 2026 are 2-2.5%, not 7%.]
You have to completely economically illiterate to believe that there has been an $18 trillion influx of foreign investment.
(Which would have created 60% GDP growth and required filling 100 million new jobs out of the 7.5 million unemployed workers).https://t.co/B1X7QfXFGL
— Jessica Riedl
(@JessicaBRiedl) January 29, 2026
Riedl isn’t the only economist calling Trump’s and Loeffler’s claims of $18T “impossible.” Liberal Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman, a Trump antagonist, joined the conservative Riedl in calling the claim dubious, writing on Substack this week:
“Trump claims that other nations have committed to invest $18 trillion in the U.S., repeating that claim in the economy speech he gave in Iowa Wednesday. Nobody knows where he got that figure. A new brief from economists at the Peterson Institute for International Economics concludes that the announced promises sum up to about $5.7 trillion, less than a third of Trump’s number.”