Estimates vary on the economic impact of government shutdowns, but by most measures, the just-completed standoff cost the economy roughly $15 billion per week. Since the shutdown lasted seven weeks, the U.S. economy just took a $105 billion hit.
For most of us, that sounds like an enormous amount of money, but given the size of the nation’s overall gross domestic product, $15 billion per week in lost economic output is unfortunate but not disastrous.
With that in mind, Donald Trump apparently decided it was time to exaggerate the cost of the shutdown — a lot. In an item published to his social media platform, the president argued: “The Democrats cost our Country $1.5 Trillion Dollars with their recent antics of viciously closing our Country.”
That was, by any responsible metric, bonkers. Trump appears to have taken a credible number and, on a whim, started adding zeroes so that he could use the word “trillion.”
As it happens, it’s a word he struggles with all the time. Take this week, for example.
On Monday, the president wrote online that he’s expecting tariff revenue to be “in excess of $2 Trillion Dollars.” A day later, he published another missive in which he boasted about tariff revenue “in excess of 3 Trillion Dollars.”
Both figures were spectacularly wrong, but more important was the question hanging overhead: How did the total go from $2 trillion to $3 trillion in the span of one day?
Similarly, in October, Trump made a series of boasts about international investments in the United States that he’s secured. He started by claiming the total was $17 trillion. It was soon after revised to “very close to $18 trillion.” In the days that followed, the new total was “$18 trillion,” followed by “over $18 trillion.”
The figure then climbed to “$19 trillion.” That was soon followed by “$20 trillion,” “over $20 trillion,” “$21 trillion” and “maybe even $22 trillion.”
If you’re thinking that the president just likes to say the word “trillion” without any meaningful connection to reality, you’re not alone.
To be sure, Trump has struggled with the basics of arithmetic for quite some time. We are, after all, talking about a president who thinks it’s possible to lower the cost of prescription drugs “by 1,500%,” as if pharmaceutical companies are prepared to start paying consumers to take free medications.
But Trump is actually offering the public an important lesson: He doesn’t use numbers and statistics like an adult; he uses numbers and statistics that he thinks sound good and make him feel better.