Trump Takes False Credit for ‘$1 Trillion’ Holiday Shopping Boom

President-elect Donald Trump is taking credit for a surge in US holiday spending that he says has exceeded $1 trillion.

But Americans haven’t spent close to that amount, according to the National Retail Federation.

Holiday spending is instead on track to reach a combined $656 billion in November and December, according to the NRF.

In a tweet Monday evening, Trump said the world was “gloomy” before he won the presidential election and “there was no hope.”

“Now the market is up nearly 10% and Christmas spending is over a trillion dollars!” he tweeted.

The world was gloomy before I won – there was no hope. Now the market is up nearly 10% and Christmas spending is over a trillion dollars!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2016

The Trump campaign didn’t provide a source for the $1 trillion figure, but it appears to come from a Deloitte study that was released in September, more than six weeks before Trump won the election.

The study forecast that holiday spending would exceed $1 trillion in the three months from November to the end of January, representing a 3.6% to 4% increase over last year’s.

There’s no evidence that spending has already hit that level.

Despite Trump’s tweet, the NRF says it’s sticking to its estimate of $656 billion in spending for the holiday period ending in December and said that projection would “either be met or exceeded.”

“We can’t compare our forecast with theirs since ours is only for November and December — it’s like comparing apples with oranges,” NRF spokeswoman Ana Smith said Tuesday of the Deloitte study.

Reality

One’s heart would need to be two sizes too small to take sole credit for Christmas.