Article • Dean Baker’s Beat the Press
Fact-based, data-driven research and analysis to advance democratic debate on vital issues shaping people’s lives.
Center for Economic and Policy Research
1611 Connecticut Ave. NW
Suite 400
Washington, DC 20009
Tel: 202-293-5380
Fax: 202-588-1356
https://cepr.net
Some folks may have been impressed with Donald Trump’s plan for $1.5 trillion in infrastructure spending over the next decade. This is both because they have little sense of the size of the economy and also because they don’t realize that he is not proposing for most of this spending to come from the federal government.
While he didn’t lay out a specific plan, past documents indicate that he wants the federal government to increase spending by $200 billion, with the rest coming from state and local governments, as well as private investors. Since GDP is projected to be almost $240 trillion over the decade, Trump is proposing to spend an amount equal to a bit more than 0.08 percent of projected GDP.