via WordPress http://ift.tt/2cYhYAl
Washington (CNN)During his campaign, Donald Trump’s made many claims about trade and the economy. CNN’s Reality Check Team put the billionaire’s statements and assertions to the test.
The team of reporters, researchers and editors across CNN listened throughout the speech and selected key statements, rating them true; mostly true; true, but misleading; false; or it’s complicated.
Reality Check: Trump on trade deficit increasing 40% while Clinton was secretary of state
June 22, 2016
By Chris Isidore and Tami Luhby, CNNMoney
Trump said Clinton should be “scorned” because the nation’s trade deficit with China soared 40% while she was secretary of state.
“Our trade deficit with China soared 40% during Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state — a disgraceful performance for which she should not be congratulated, but rather scorned,” he said.
Actually, the trade deficit rose only 12% if you look between 2008 and 2012, which is the most accurate way to measure what happened under her tenure, which ran from early 2009 until early 2013, according to federal trade data.
However, if you cherry-pick the data from 2009 to 2012, the deficit jumped 34%. But that’s because the trade gap narrowed during the depths of the recession in 2009.
Either way, Trump’s assertion is exaggerated. Therefore, we rate it as false.
Reality Check: Trump on losing nearly 1/3 of manufacturing jobs since NAFTA and China admitted to World Trade Organization
June 22, 2016
By Tami Luhby, CNNMoney
Trump lashed out at Clinton’s support of trade agreements that he said were “among the most destructive ever signed.”
Specifically, Trump cited the North American Free Trade Agreement, which then-President Bill Clinton signed in 1994, and China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization in late 2001, for which the former president smoothed the way.
“We’ve lost nearly one-third of our manufacturing jobs since these two Hillary-backed agreements were signed,” Trump said.
The presumptive Republican candidate is exaggerating the figures a bit. The nation has lost 27% of its manufacturing jobs since NAFTA was signed in 1994. The sector, which employed 16.9 million people back then, now has 12.3 million workers.
But that masks the fact that the industry actually expanded it payrolls slightly under the remainder of Bill Clinton’s term.
The bleeding really began in the early 2000s and continued through and immediately after the Great Recession.
Manufacturers, however, have been adding jobs since early 2010. Employment is up 7.3% since then.
Yet it’s not clear how much free trade deals drove the decline in manufacturing employment. Corporate America was already shifting jobs to lower-wage countries, and technology already made it more costly for U.S. companies to produce goods here. Also, today’s factory jobs require more education and skills, leaving many less-educated Americans on the sidelines.
Trump also said that the nation will lose millions more jobs if Hillary Clinton is elected because she will adopt the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, which the former secretary of state had supported but now opposes. His comments here are misleading, too, because only Congress has the power to ratify trade agreements.
We therefore rate Trump’s statement as true, but misleading, because there were many other factors beyond trade that led to the decline in manufacturing employment after China entered the WTO.
Reality Check: Trump started off with a ‘small loan’
June 22, 2016
By Jeremy Diamond and Sonam Vashi, CNN
“I started off in Brooklyn, New York, not so long ago, with a small loan and built a business that today is worth well over $10 billion,” Trump said during a speech in Washington.
We reported on this claim last October.
That small loan from Trump’s father was worth $1 million, probably given before Trump entered the Manhattan real estate market in the early 1970s.
If Trump’s father made the loan in 1968, the year his son graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, that $1 million would be worth $6.8 million in today’s dollars, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index inflation calculator.
Trump has built up a multi-billion-dollar net worth, expanding his father’s lucrative real estate business to new heights. But while much of Trump’s success is a credit to his work, he was born into a successful, wealthy family, inheriting part of his father’s more than $200 million net worth.
Trump’s narrative of self-making his entire fortune doesn’t quite hold up either — The Washington Post Fact Checker found that he profited from loans, loan guarantees, his father’s connections and trusts to help create his empire.
Trump has boasted over and over that his net worth is $10 billion, but it’s unclear how true that really is. Last year, Forbes rated his net worth as $4.5 billion — less than half of what Trump claims. We’ve only gotten a glimpse of Trump’s financial details, especially as Trump has refused to release his tax returns (because he’s being audited, he claims), but we know he’s worth at least a billion.
Given that for almost all Americans, $1 million is hardly a small loan, especially back in 1968, we rate his claim that he started his business with a “small loan” as false.
Reality Check: Trump on paying for the wall with Mexico
February 25, 2016
By Tami Luhby, CNNMoney
Trump has long said he wants to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and get the Mexican government to pay for it. More recently, he’s been tying the issue to America’s trade deficit with its southern neighbor.
“We have a trade deficit with Mexico of $58 billion a year. And that doesn’t include all the drugs that are pouring across and destroying our country. We are going to make them pay for that wall. Now, the wall is $10 billion to $12 billion,” Trump said during the Republican debate in Houston, the last debate before Super Tuesday.
It’s true that the trade deficit with Mexico was $58 billion last year. But that doesn’t mean the Mexican government can pay for the wall … not to mention whether they’d even agree to.
The deficit means that private firms in Mexico have earned more money from trading with the U.S. than U.S. firms have earned from trade with Mexico, said Gary Hufbauer, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
“It not like it’s a pot of money available to the Mexican government,” he said.
So it’s false that the trade deficit gives Mexico the money to pay for the wall.
CNN also looked at the cost of building the wall. Construction experts said a wall fashioned out of pre-casted concrete panels — similar to those that run alongside highways — would be the most workable choice.
Based on the price of highway panels, the price tag for the wall alone would cost around $10 billion, which is not accounting for the cost of construction that would take at least four years over the border’s diverse terrain.
Other construction estimates have come in much higher. A retired estimator and economist for one of the nation’s largest construction firms calculated it would cost nearly $25 billion, according to The Washington Post.
We rate Trump’s claim that building the wall would cost between $10 billion and $12 billion as false.
Read more: http://ift.tt/2dseGo0
The post Donald Trump on trade and the economy: CNN’s Reality Check vets the claims appeared first on MavWrek Marketing by Jason
No comments:
Post a Comment