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Has Trump secured $18tn worth of investments for the US?published at 05:11 GMT

05:11 GMT

Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

By Lucy Gilder

Trump claimed to have secured $18tn (£13tn) of investment in the US.

“In 12 months I secured commitments for more than $18tn pouring in from all over the globe,” he said.

But there is no publicly available evidence to support a figure this big. A White House website, last updated in , externalFebruary, external this year, aims to track “new investment in U.S. manufacturing, technology, and infrastructure”.

It states that investments since Trump returned to the White House total $9.6tn (£7.1tn).The biggest single investment listed is a $1.4tn (£1tn) investment in manufacturing and industry by the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The website for the UAE embassy in Washington DC says the country is “working with the Trump Administration to make a historic $1.4 trillion investment in the US over the next decade”.

Greg Auclair, a statistician at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told BBC Verify that there has been an uptick in foreign investment in the US over the past year.

But he cautioned that the White House tracker “includes pledges that may not materialize”. The EU trade deal, for example, appeared to be frozen due to tensions over Greenland, and was again halted in February because of Trump’s tariff threats.