Trump’s premature economic announcements show how desperate he is about the midterms

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President Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear that he’s happy to use official government resources in ethically dubious ways to try to win the 2026 midterm elections.

He promised to pay every adult US citizen $5,000 if Republicans win. He’s sending $500 to some Obamacare recipients with a very political letter enclosed. And now he’s running government-funded ads that promote himself and are obviously geared towards the election.

But wait. There’s more.

Twice this week, Trump has held White House events announcing a major economic project that happens to benefit a state holding a key, competitive Senate race — first in Iowa, then in Alaska.

And both times, his promises have proven to be overzealous, at best.

Trump announced the Iowa project on Monday at an Oval Office event featuring Senate candidate Rep. Ashley Hinson and many others. It was for a new $15 billion Mesabi Metallics steel plant in Lee County in eastern Iowa — one that could create thousands of jobs and make Iowa the second-largest steel-producing state in the United States.

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

And when a reporter inquired about how definite the plans were, Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick assured they were effectively written in stone.

“I think this deal is done. This deal is done,” Lutnick said. “They’ve already worked it out. That’s why we’re all together with the president. The president doesn’t bring people together unless it’s a done deal. You guys know that already.”

Trump then jumped in, claiming: “They’ve already started building.”

Indeed, just a day later, Republican Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds called an emergency special session of the state legislature focused on tax incentives for the project — exactly the issue that Lutnick was asked about when he declared the deal done .

The same day, local TV station KWQC reported that the project still hadn’t acquired land or applied for permits, and Lee County officials said they didn’t have details about the project.

There are also real doubts about whether any of this will ultimately prove to be real, as CNN’s Eric Bradner and Jeff Zeleny report . Big projects like these can prove quite difficult to get across the finish line. Some locally are comparing the project to Foxconn, a Taiwanese electronics company that never delivered a $10 billion Wisconsin plant — one that, like the Iowa steel plant, Trump announced at a White House event in 2017.

“It sounds too good to be true, and it just might be,” a top Iowa GOP official told CNN, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid inflaming the Trump administration.

Hinson dismissed the Foxconn comparisons.

“I don’t think so,” she told CNN. “I trust our governor, who has been working on this deal for months to make sure that we secure that investment here in Iowa.”

But even those comments implicitly acknowledge the deal isn’t nearly as done as Trump and Lutnick claimed it was.

And it’s downright bizarre that Trump said construction had begun. He was either lying or had no idea about the subject of the entire event he was hosting.

The story is quite similar with another Trump announcement on Wednesday: that South Korea would spend more than $50 billion on a struggling natural gas pipeline in Alaska.

As with the Iowa announcement, Trump made this one at the White House next to the vulnerable GOP senator, Dan Sullivan.

Kent Nishimura/AFP/Getty Images

And as with the Iowa announcement, Trump and Lutnick treated this as a done deal. Trump said South Korea had agreed to invest large sums in the US to lower its tariffs, and “part of that money is going into this project” — the pipeline.

“It’s the combination of your deal-making and your trade deal that allowed this to happen, and this is extraordinary,” Lutnick told Trump. “This will change Alaska, and it will change geopolitics.”

Trump said politicians had been talking about the project for five decades but failed to deliver. He said it would be “one of the largest energy projects in American history.” He said it would save Alaskans thousands in energy bills.

Sullivan’s office called it a “historic $54 billion investment by South Korea.”

But by Thursday, South Korea disputed Trump’s claims .

“Putting figures or using definitive language goes far beyond what was agreed,” Minister of Trade Industry and Resources Kim Jung-kwan said, according to South Korean news agency Yonhap.

Kim said South Korea was still reviewing whether to proceed with the pipeline.

When asked about the discrepancy, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers didn’t explain it.

“Wednesday’s joint announcement was historic for the great state of Alaska, the United States, and the Republic of Korea,” Rogers said instead.

Trump followed that up with a social media post Friday claiming South Korea had also promised “ 8.4 Billion Dollars for an enhanced Oil Recovery Project .” Given what occurred earlier in the week, it’s hard to completely take him at his word.

It would seem rather coincidental that two major projects in two states majorly important to the Senate battle would suddenly come together around the exact same time with about a month to go in the 2026 midterms.

And it would also seem rather curious that, in both cases, Trump’s and his team’s claims about how ironclad these projects are were quickly knocked down.

Of course, as Foxconn and plenty of other examples show, Trump often jumps the gun when it comes to touting such projects and his successes in facilitating them. He loves a big announcement; he rarely worries about how it might look later when the things he says fall apart.

That doesn’t mean these projects won’t ultimately happen. It’s just that, if they don’t, we’ll likely learn that long after Hinson’s and Sullivan’s electoral fates will be decided.

Kind of like how, if those $5,000 checks never materialize — as plenty doubt they will, given the more than $1 trillion price tag and the legal issues — it’d be too late for voters to get a mulligan on the 2026 election.

And voters in Iowa and Alaska would do well to view these announcements in the context of things like that. Because right now, Trump seems to have an anything-goes attitude towards trying to win the 2026 election.

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唐纳德·特朗普总统已经非常明确地表示，他乐于以不道德的方式利用官方政府资源来赢得 2026 年中期选举。

他承诺，如果共和党获胜，就给每位成年美国公民发放5000美元。他还给一些奥巴马医改受益人寄送了500美元，并附上了一封政治意味浓厚的信。现在，他又开始投放政府资助的广告，为自己造势，显然是为了这次选举。

但等等，还有更多。

本周，特朗普两次在白宫举行活动，宣布一项重大经济项目，而这些项目恰好有利于正在进行一场关键且竞争激烈的参议院选举的州——先是在爱荷华州，然后是在阿拉斯加州。

而事实证明，他这两次的承诺充其量也只是过于热情而已。

周一，特朗​​普在椭圆形办公室宣布了爱荷华州的项目，参议院候选人、众议员阿什利·欣森和其他许多人也出席了此次活动。该项目是在爱荷华州东部的李县新建一座价值150亿美元的梅萨比金属钢铁厂，有望创造数千个就业岗位，并使爱荷华州成为美国第二大钢铁生产州。

凯文·拉马克/路透社

当记者询问这些计划的确定程度时，特朗普和商务部长霍华德·卢特尼克保证说，这些计划实际上已经板上钉钉。

“我认为这笔交易已经达成。这笔交易已经达成，”卢特尼克说。“他们已经商定好了。这就是为什么我们今天都和总统在一起。总统不会在交易没有敲定的情况下召集大家。你们都知道这一点。”

特朗普随即插话道：“他们已经开始建设了。”

事实上，仅仅一天之后，爱荷华州共和党州长金·雷诺兹就召集州立法机构召开紧急特别会议，重点讨论该项目的税收优惠——这正是卢特尼克宣布交易完成时被问及的问题。

同一天，当地电视台 KWQC 报道称，该项目仍未获得土地或申请许可证，李县官员表示他们没有有关该项目的详细信息。

正如CNN的埃里克·布拉德纳和杰夫·泽莱尼报道的那样，人们也对这一切最终能否成真抱有真正的怀疑。像这样的大型项目往往难以最终完成。一些当地人士将该项目与富士康相提并论。富士康是一家台湾电子公司，其在威斯康星州投资100亿美元的工厂最终未能建成——与爱荷华州的钢铁厂一样，特朗普也曾在2017年的一次白宫活动上宣布过该项目。

“这听起来好得令人难以置信，而且很可能就是假的，”一位爱荷华州共和党高层官员告诉 CNN，他要求匿名发言，以免激怒特朗普政府。

欣森驳斥了将富士康与之相提并论的说法。

“我不这么认为，”她告诉CNN。“我相信我们的州长，他几个月来一直在努力促成这笔交易，以确保我们能在爱荷华州获得这笔投资。”

但即使是这些评论也间接承认，这笔交易远没有特朗普和卢特尼克声称的那样已经完成。

特朗普说工程已经开始，这简直匪夷所思。他要么是在撒谎，要么就是对他主持的整个活动的主题一无所知。

周三，特朗普宣布的另一项消息也与之非常相似：韩国将斥资超过 500 亿美元用于阿拉斯加一条陷入困境的天然气管道项目。

与在爱荷华州宣布结果时一样，特朗普这次也是在白宫，站在处境岌岌可危的共和党参议员丹·沙利文旁边宣布的。

Kent Nishimura/AFP/Getty Images

与爱荷华州的宣布一样，特朗普和卢特尼克也把这件事当作板上钉钉的事。特朗普说，韩国已同意在美国投资巨资以降低关税，“其中一部分资金将用于这个项目”——也就是这条输油管道。

“正是你促成的交易和贸易协议的结合才使得这一切成为可能，这非同寻常，”卢特尼克对特朗普说。“这将改变阿拉斯加，也将改变地缘政治格局。”

特朗普表示，政客们已经谈论这个项目五十年了，但始终未能落实。他说，这将是“美国历史上最大的能源项目之一”。他还说，该项目将为阿拉斯加人节省数千美元的能源费用。

苏利文的办公室称这是“韩国历史性的 540 亿美元投资”。

但到了周四，韩国方面对特朗普的说法提出了异议。

据韩国联合通讯社报道，韩国贸易产业资源部长官金正冠表示：“给出具体数字或使用明确的措辞远远超出了双方商定的范围。”

金正恩表示，韩国仍在评估是否继续推进该管道项目。

当被问及这一差异时，白宫发言人泰勒·罗杰斯没有做出解释。

罗杰斯却说：“周三的联合声明对伟大的阿拉斯加州、美国和韩国来说都具有历史意义。”

特朗普周五在社交媒体上发帖称，韩国也承诺提供“84亿美元用于提高石油采收率项目”。鉴于本周早些时候发生的事情，很难完全相信他的话。

两个对参议院之争至关重要的州的两个重大项目，在 2026 年中期选举还有一个月左右的时间里突然齐头并进，这似乎相当巧合。

而且，令人颇感奇怪的是，在这两种情况下，特朗普及其团队关于这些项目万无一失的说法都很快被驳斥了。

当然，富士康和其他许多例子都表明，特朗普在吹嘘此类项目及其促成成果时，常常操之过急。他喜欢大张旗鼓地宣布，却很少考虑日后他所说的事情一旦落空会造成怎样的后果。

但这并不意味着这些项目最终不会实现。只是，如果它们最终没有实现，我们很可能要等到欣森和沙利文的选举结果尘埃落定很久之后才会知道。

这就好比，如果那 5000 美元的支票最终没有兑现——考虑到超过 1 万亿美元的巨额资金和法律问题，很多人都怀疑它们能否兑现——那么选民们想要在 2026 年大选中重新来过就太晚了。

爱荷华州和阿拉斯加州的选民最好从这个角度来看待这些声明。因为目前来看，特朗普似乎为了赢得2026年大选，采取了不择手段的态度。