SerpApi.Org
President Donald Trump's administration is asking for additional money after billions of dollars in military spending in the Iran war, but it comes after the president has spent the past seven months bragging about making billions and trillions of dollars off of his policies for the U.S.
A recent report by the Financial Timesrecalls Trump's January statement that the U.S. seized “millions of barrels” of oil from Venezuela in January. He claimed that the funds would be spent on both the American people and Venezuela.
According to the State Department, “billions of dollars have been disbursed to the Venezuelan economy,” and that “financial monitoring is underway to ensure funds benefit the Venezuelan people.”
The problem, FT reported, is that no one knows where that money went.
“Trump’s invasion of Venezuela has been about oil, power, and graft from the very beginning, with billions of dollars in Venezuelan oil revenue being controlled by the Trump administration without transparency or safeguards,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) to the paper. Congress, he explained, has been "kept in the dark" on the matter.
Republican Rep. María Elvira Salazar (Fla.) similarly asked for "transparency" over where the money has gone.
The problem, however, is that this isn't the first time Trump has claimed without proof that something he did raised a lot of money for the U.S. Perhaps the largest expenditure discrepancy comes from Trump's tariffs.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Trump claimed, "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."
In January 2026, Trump told reporters at the White House, "Because of the tariffs, we've taken in more than 18—think of this—more than $18 trillion. There's never been anything like it." He later repeated, "We took in more than $18 trillion in 10 months."
In a Jan. 7 post on Truth Social, Trump even suggested that he would use the money from the tariffs to give a 50 percent increase to the military budget. It meant spending $1.5 trillion. He said it would "easily" be funded while also bringing down the national debt. Trump promised “a substantial Dividend to moderate income Patriots within our Country!”
Trump's trade representative, Jamieson Greer, appeared before Congress on Wednesday morning and never spelled out the discrepancy between Trump's numbers and the actual sum of revenue from the tariffs.
Investor Steven Rattner wrote that the U.S. now has a net loss of -$26 billion from the Trump tariffs.
It's unknown where the $18 trillion is, but the military is asking for more money again.
During the campaign, Trump and trillionaire Elon Musk promised it could save America $2 trillion by making drastic government cuts. That never happened, but upon leaving the White House, Musk claimed he'd saved the federal government roughly $215 billion. That amount could certainly fund the military request, but The Fiscal Times calculated Musk really only saved about $9 billion, by some estimations, and as much as $22 billion from other calculations.
In another promise, the administration claimed in a press release that they accomplished an "unprecedented $211.8 billion reduction in regulatory costs in fiscal year 2025." Officials also projected that in 2026 they'd likely save $1.5 trillion.
In Nov. 2025, Trump announced that he secured a commitment from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for "almost" $1 trillion in investments. This came after a $600 billion commitment from MBS in May 2025, the White House said in a fact sheet.
Trump's Ukraine minerals deal, which he announced in January 2026, would "significantly exceed $350 billion." Before that, he demanded $500 billion worth of "rare earths" in return for U.S. support.
Together, it adds up to about $23 trillion in investments and savings in the best-case scenario. At a bare minimum, Trump's promises would add up to at least $18.6 trillion.
As of today, Rattner wrote, Trump has taken the $1.8 trillion deficit and increased it to $1.9 trillion "even after adjusting for inflation."
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