What Trump Said About the US Economy – Fact-Checked

President Donald Trump addressed Congress on Tuesday to present his plans for a second term in office, which began roughly six weeks ago. Since then, there has already been disorder within the federal workforce, the breakdown of communication with allies, and the beginning stages of a trade war.

With both parties in Congress supporting him and Democrats preparing for the upcoming elections, Trump is able to push his plans forward for increased spending alongside tax cuts and tariffs. Just a few hours prior, the administration imposed 25 percent tariffs on goods imported from Mexico and Canada and added another ten percent tax on China that had been raised a month ago.

The following statements made by the president are the most important pertaining to his economic policies, and are complete with context and fact checking.

“As Joe Biden did, he particularly stood back while egg prices surged. Current egg prices are absurdly high, and my administration is trying to decrease them as fast as possible.”

Most birds were killed post December when an outbreak struck egg-laying farms across Iowa, California, and North Carolina, leading to an increase in surcharges by restaurants and purchases being limited from grocery stores. February recorded a measure of $8 on a dozen eggs, the previous figure was $2.97 twelve months ago as stated by the price-reporting service, Expanas, which marked its all-time high in February. “In the span of 48 years, I believe we have experienced the worst inflation along with the rest of the world. But with time I believe, we will surely find out,” said an anonymous.
This statement is certainly untrue. Within the Biden’s term, in comparison to the last forty years, upper termination of consumer prices was the highest. “Given the chaotic state of relations with Europe, and their inability to balance the budget, I really want to believe inflation will decline. But at the same time, we crossed the line of 50%,” said another anonymous. Amid all this, Trump’s policies including investing upto $3.5 trillion on stimulus checks alongside other measures to counter post-covid economy contributed significantly to the ever-so high supply chain constraints. In June of 2022, the US noted its highest yearly inflation of 9.1% which dropped to 2.7% in November during Trumps elections. “Under these estimates, in January, it was 3 percent,” said an anonymous. While commenting on his tariff plans, Trump once stated, “We will take in trillions and trillions of dollars and create jobs like we have never seen before.”

While tariffs do create revenue in the United States, China and other foreign nations are not the ones paying them. US Companies pay the most duties and ultimately US importers, businesses, and consumers bear the burden by paying higher costs. This requires further context. One 2019 academic study concluded that US Companies and Citizens shouldered the most cost during Trump’s first term in office for the tariffs and after considering the retaliation, blue-collared farmers and workers from areas that supported Trump’s campaign were the ones suffering the most during the trade wars.

“Tariffs aim to enrich America and propel the country towards greatness, and that will come to fruition in due time. There will be some turbulence, but we’re perfectly fine with that. It would only be minimal.”

This doesn’t explain everything. Great Trump believes that tariffs could offset the value of the $4.5 trillion tax dollars expiring due to the tax cuts made in 2017, and that it could even take the place of the 2 trillion dollars of taxes that was borrowed from the government. According to a Congress Research Service report published in January, tariffs have never exceeded 2% of revenue raised post the World War Two period. Economists from Peterson Institute for International Economics predicted this would cause an impairment in economic growth, even when a US earning’s tax rate of 50% would generate 780 billion dollars.

Both businesses and the general public are concerned. Harris Polls, which were conducted for Bloomberg News, showed that 60% of Americans believe that Trump’s tariffs will hike prices for goods and services, while 44% predict it will negatively impact the economy. According to a survey conducted by Bloomberg News on a transcript, tariffs have been mentioned an unprecedented 700 times in the earnings calls of S&P 500 firms.

As the Peterson Institute pointed out, the tariffs which Trump has applied on China, Canada and Mexico would cost the average Us family over $1200 annually.

According to Trump, “We’re going to have growth in the auto industry like nobody’s ever seen.” He claimed he has had conversations with the leading auto manufacturers who claim sheds are being built and announced on all fronts.

This needs a double take. US automobile executives have stated that taxing imports from Canada and Mexico is unnecessarily harsh to American car builders who have their supply chains and plants located in North America. A recently conducted Anderson Economic Group study, claims the cost to produce a crossover utility vehicle will increase by at least $4000, and triple that cost for electric vehicles.

Honda Motor Co. said that they have yet to make a public statement on increasing their operations in Indiana, which Trump has claimed, and refused to elaborate further.

“During these four years, there has been a net increase of 21 million people in the country, many of which were murderers, human traffickers, gang members and other types of criminals.”

That is false." There is no reason to believe that other countries were ready to relinquish control of their prisoners and mental patients to the United States to join the migrants who were trying to escape violence and poverty. Trump specifically claimed that ‘13,000 murderers’ came into the country based on data that were provided during the campaign of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Which incorporated 13,099 people who had the legal designation of homicide and several hundred thousand convicted criminals. But those numbers span decades, Trump’s first term in office being one of them.

Also, Trump and the Republicans blame the migrants for being the cause of crime phenomena. One, two five research pieces have proven that undocumented migrants commit less crimes than other immigrants - and even less than American citizens.

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