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Tariffs
In talking about trade and tariffs, Trump pulled out one of his favorite lines, telling the audience, “Billions of dollars right now are pouring into our Treasury.”
Facts First: Technically this is true. It’s just that the billions of dollars aren’t coming from foreign countries and companies, as Trump has suggested in the past. Instead, it’s American companies and consumers that are paying most of the cost of these tariffs.
When Trump talks about tariffs, he often talks about the amount of money that is now pouring into the US Treasury. He tends to give the impression that money is being paid by foreign companies. But that’s not really what’s happening. Instead, most of those tariffs are being paid by US companies that import those foreign goods.
The real question is who bears the cost. Often, US companies will pass it on to the consumer by raising prices, while other times a company will reduce compensation or employment internally to offset these higher costs. In some instances, the Chinese supplier might take on the burden of the tariff by reducing its prices in order to maintain its price advantage in the US.
Trump is trying to realign trade so that US products become more competitive with their cheaper Chinese alternatives. That will likely require a long-term adjustment of the US industrial base. In the short term, US consumers and companies will most likely end up bearing the cost of the tariffs. The Tax Foundation said last year that it expects the tariffs to lower the gross domestic product and wages, and cost American jobs, hitting lower- and middle-income households the hardest.
Mueller
Trump also went after the Russia probe, claiming that “13 Democrats” work on Robert Mueller’s team.
Facts First: According to several reports, 13 members of Mueller’s team have registered as Democrats in the past. The majority of them though have been longstanding Department of Justice employees.
Mueller assembled a team that at its peak consisted of at least 17 lawyers and “dozens” of FBI agents to help with his investigation. Nine of the lawyers donated to Democratic candidates before 2017, according to federal records. Eight of those lawyers gave only to Democrats, while one has donated to Democrats and Republicans before.
It’s worth noting that making political donations is within the rules and is not itself a disqualification, as Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (who appointed Mueller as special counsel) told Congress in 2017.
Asked by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham whether political donations should prevent attorneys from working on the investigation, Rosenstein replied, “No, senator, it is not a disqualification. It is not.”
Mueller was a registered Republican as recently as 2017 and was appointed as FBI director under George W. Bush. Rosenstein is also a registered Republican.
Trump also claimed that one of the lawyers on Mueller’s team has been “involved with the Hillary Clinton Foundation, running it.”
Facts First: This is false. No one on Mueller’s team ever ran the Clinton Foundation.
Manufacturing
Trump claimed that he brought back “600,000 beautiful manufacturing jobs that were never going to come back to our country.”
Facts First: While the pace of manufacturing job creation has increased since Trump took office in 2017, he is overstating the number by nearly 150,000. It’s also unclear how much credit any president deserves for the decisions made by manufacturing companies to hire more workers.
By the time former President Barack Obama left office, there were some 190,000 fewer manufacturing jobs than existed at the start of his administration. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. The US was in a deep recession when Obama entered the White House in January 2009, and the manufacturing sector was shedding tens of thousands of jobs a month. But the losses stopped by early 2010. Over the next six-plus years, manufacturing jobs rose by more than 800,000.
Also, while the number of manufacturing jobs continues to increase, the total is stil below its pre-recession level.
Employment
Trump repeated the claim that “more people are working today in the United States than ever before in our country.”
Facts First: This is true but needs context.
In a way, this is the equivalent of Trump taking credit for a growing population. The more relevant statistic is the percentage of people who are participating in the labor force. That number, which is up recently, still remains below pre-recession levels.
Here’s what we found when Trump made the same claim during his State of the Union address:
Immigration
The President repeated the claim that one in three women are assaulted on the journey to the US southern border.
Facts First: This appears to be somewhat true though there are reasons to be skeptical of the data it’s based on.
Trump made a similar claim during a speech on immigration in January. “One in three women are sexually assaulted on the dangerous trek up through Mexico. Women and children are the biggest victims by far of our broken system,” he said. “This is the tragic reality of illegal immigration on our southern border.”
This data from Doctors Without Borders, however, is measuring a small group of migrant women and more data is needed to accurately assess the number of women that are assaulted, physically or sexually.
Stock market
Touting the decrease in food stamp recipients, more manufacturing jobs and other successes, Trump said that if Hillary Clinton had won in 2016 the stock market would have gone down 50%, claiming that it “was heading down” before he took office. Was it really going down?
Facts First: No.
All three major indexes saw gains in 2016, with the NASDAQ up 7.5% and the S&P 500 gaining 9.5%.
Obama’s tenure saw a near tripling of the S&P 500, mostly due to very low interest rates and recovery from the recession.
Trump’s claim that the stock markets were “heading down” is not correct.
California forest management
“When I’m with (Newsom) face-to-face, nice guy. When he speaks about me, not so nice, but face-to-face he loves me,” Trump said before suggesting that California needs some “forest money.” “I think they need some forest money because, honestly,” said Trump, “the management of the forest is very bad and that’s one of the problems they have.”
“Gotta clean it up. It’s called management. When a tree falls you can’t let the environmentalists say you can’t take that tree out. Becomes like a matchstick, that tree. It hits a flame, it goes up. The leaves, every once in a while, you have to remove the leaves.”
Facts First: This is claim is more nuanced than Trump’s previous statements on forest management, but it still overstated. He also misses what is involved in “forest management.”
Lastly, forest management is much more complicated than removing dead leaves and fallen branches as Trump claimed. Often it involves tree-thinning and the removal of smaller trees — but there are many different methods of forest management based on the terrain type, among other factors.
Abortion
Invoking the recent story of the “Covington kids” (where video of high school students approached by Native American activists created a media firestorm) CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp claimed on Saturday that New York and Virginia governors supported post-birth abortions.
“How many of you followed this Covington story?” Schlapp asked the CPAC audience Saturday. “Do you know why they came to the nation’s capital? They came to the nation’s capital to march against what the governor of Virginia and the governor of New York want to see happen, which is literally post-birth abortions.”
Facts First: Recent legislation introduced in Virginia and New York has sought to ease restrictions on certain third-trimester abortions. Much of the current controversy stems from a radio interview Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam gave, in which he made some odd claims on proposed abortion legislation that created confusion around the bill. But Schlapp’s characterization of the legislation in New York and Virginia is not accurate.
New York
New York’s new law expands access to abortions into the third trimester by loosening restrictions on when the procedure is permitted. Previously, an abortion could only be performed after 24 weeks if the physician deemed it necessary to preserve the life of the mother. Under the new law, the requirement has been expanded to include the general health of the mother.
Virginia
Northam was asked about Tran’s comments in a Jan. 30 interview with the radio station WTOP. Northam began to explain what he thought occurs in such an instance. His comments sparked confusion and controversy among abortion opponents.
“The infant would be delivered,” Northam said, “the infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
This clarification, however, does not address the statement made by Northam that “the infant would be delivered.”
By the numbers
Opioids
While discussing the opioid epidemic and illicit drugs, Fox News contributor Sara Carter told CPAC’s audience that in the height of the crisis, places in Ohio ran out of room for bodies in the morgues and had to put some in freezer trailers outside.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like this then when I went to the epicenter in Ohio and other states who are facing this crisis,” said Carter, “where the morgues were so overflowing with bodies that they had to rent freezer trailers to put the children in the freezer trailers outside of the mortuary.”
Facts First: This is true.
Initially, Carter’s claim was met with skepticism online, with some accusing her of overblowing the opioid crisis.
Tax cuts
While praising President Donald Trump during his remarks at CPAC, Vice President Mike Pence listed off some of the accomplishments he believes the administration has made in its first two years. Among them, of course, was the 2017 tax reform.
“With the support of this generation of conservatives, President Trump signed the largest tax cut and tax reform in American history,” the Vice President said. “That’s promises made and promises kept.”
Facts First: The tax cut Trump signed into law in December 2017 was certainly large, but the largest? No.
When it comes to measuring the size of these tax reforms, many studies look at how the federal tax revenue lost from the cut compares as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) over time.
No matter how many times the administration makes this claim, it’s still incorrect.
Dead cows
During the second day of CPAC, several speakers made jokes (some more seriously than others) about the Green New Deal, specifically suggesting that Democrats are looking to get rid of cows.
Referencing the Green New Deal resolution, former Deputy Assistant to President Trump Sebastian Gorka claimed that Democrats “‘want to take your pickup truck, they want to rebuild your home, they want to take away your hamburgers. This is what Stalin dreamt about but never achieved.” Sen. Ted Cruz, too, made reference to the removal of cows.
“I hope to see PETA supporting the Republican party,” he said, “now that the Democrats want to kill all the cows.” Rep. Mark Meadows joined in on the joke, suggesting that Chick-Fil-A’s stock will increase with Democrats “trying to get rid of all the cows,” citing the Green New Deal.
Facts First: Getting rid of cows was mentioned in a now-removed FAQ on the Green New Deal but is not in the actual resolution.
The FAQ was later renounced by Ocasio-Cortez and her team, with her Chief of Staff Saikat Chakrabarti tweeting that an “early draft of a FAQ that was clearly unfinished and that doesn’t represent the GND resolution got published to the website by mistake.”
This story is breaking and being updated.
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