Seventeen days ago, President Donald Trump made a dramatic claim in an interview on the business news channel CNBC. As part of his July trade agreement with the European Union, he said, the EU gave the United States a $600 billion present he could spend however he wanted.
“They gave me $600 billion. And that’s a gift,” he said. “That’s not like, you know, a loan, by the way. That’s not a loan that, oh gee, three years comes up, we have to pay it back. There’s nothing to pay back. They gave us $600 billion that we can invest in anything we want.”
A CNBC journalist said she appreciated the information, since they had been trying to figure out the details surrounding the $600 billion. Trump responded: “There are no details. The details are, $600 billion to invest in anything I want. Anything. I can do anything I want.”
Trade experts were highly skeptical of Trump’s claims, especially because the European side had said in July that the $600 billion figure referred to private-sector European companies’ “intentions” to invest in the US over time rather than some sort of lump-sum EU handout to the Trump administration. But it wasn’t possible to definitively debunk Trump’s narrative at the time of the CNBC interview, since the US and EU had not released an official joint text on what had been agreed between the two sides.
The two sides published a “framework” on Thursday. It’s brief and vague – but it shows there is no $600 billion gift.
