Fact-checking
Donald Trump’s speech on his economic plan
The
Republican presidential nominee outlined his economic vision for the
US, including plans to dramatically slash taxes. Here, we separate
fact from fiction
Alan Yuhas in San
Francisco
Monday 8 August 2016
22.37 BST
Donald Trump
outlined his economic vision for the US on Monday, including plans to
dramatically slash taxes. Here we fact-check his key claims.
Trump's economic
plan: no 'death tax', less business tax, and fewer regulations
“When we were
governed by the ‘America first’ policy, Detroit was absolutely
booming.”
The United States
has never been governed by an “America first” policy, though
Trump likely means this rhetorically to say the US has shed some of
its protectionist and isolationist tendencies over the past century.
The America First Committee was an isolationist group in the early
1940s that wanted the US not to enter the second world war and was
led by aviator Charles Lindbergh, who sympathized with the racial
ideas of the Nazis.
“Our roads and our
bridges fell into disrepair, yet we found the money to resettle
millions of refugees at taxpayer expense.”
American
infrastructure has deteriorated significantly over several decades,
in part due to many years of neglect by state and federal officials
of both parties. Nevertheless, in 2014, the most recent year on
record, federal, state and local governments spent $416bn on
infrastructure, including $96bn from the federal government,
according to the Congressional Budget Office, an increase from
previous years.
These figures dwarf
spending on refugee resettlement, according to the nonpartisan
National Conference of State Legislatures, which found that the
Office of Refugee Resettlement spent $1.56bn in the fiscal year of
2015.
“Detroit has per
capita income of about $15,000, about half of the national average.”
According to the
Census’ American community survey, Detroit’s per capita income in
2014, the most recent year on record, was $14,810, which is just over
half the national per capita income of the past 12 months, $28,555.
Median household income in Detroit is $25,769, about half the
national average, $53,657.
“Forty per cent of
the city’s residents live in poverty, over 2.5 times the national
average.”
In 2014, 39.3% of
Detroit residents were living below the poverty line, compared to
14.8% nationally, according to the Census Bureau.
Advertisement
“The unemployment
rate [in Detroit] is over twice the national average.”
Detroit’s
unemployment rate is 11.6%, according to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS), more than double the national rate of 4.9% – but
Trump is choosing here to believe the national rate, which he later
and without evidence called “one of the biggest hoaxes”. The BLS
also tracks unemployment in the Detroit metro area, which it found to
be 5.8%.
“Detroit tops the
list of the most dangerous cities in terms of violent crime.”
Trump is correct,
according to FBI data on large American cities, with 13,616 violent
crimes in 2014, the most recent year on record.
But the FBI’s
preliminary data for the first six months of 2015 shows St Louis,
Missouri, as the most dangerous city in the US, with 88.1 violent
crimes per 100,000 people. In the new report, Detroit ranks third,
with 83.4 crimes per 100,000 residents, behind Memphis, Tennessee,
with 84.2 crimes per 100,000 residents.
“The trade deals
like Nafta, signed by her husband [Bill Clinton], that have shipped
your jobs to Mexico and other countries ... ”
Republican George HW
Bush negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta),
which Clinton signed unaltered with more support from Republicans
than Democrats. Economists still debate the effect of the deal on
jobs, since US trade with Canada and Mexico is modest at best. In
2015, the Congressional Research Service wrote: “Nafta did not
cause the huge job losses feared by the critics or the large economic
gains predicted by supporters.”
“Hillary Clinton
short-circuited again, to use a now famous term, when she
accidentally told the truth, when she said she wanted to raise taxes
on the middle class.”
For months, Clinton
has said she would not raise taxes on the middle class, including
during a primary debate in which she forced Bernie Sanders to concede
his plan included a modest increase for the tax bracket. Trump is
alluding to a recent rally when Clinton slurred the end of the word
“aren’t” but clearly stated: “We aren’t going to raise
taxes on the middle class.”
Trump is alluding to
a June report by the Tax Foundation, which found that Americans spend
8.9bn hours and $409bn on compliance.
“We will work with
House Republicans on this plan, using the same brackets they have
proposed: 12%, 25% and 33%.”
This is a change
from Trump’s original tax plan, released in September and removed
from his website (though still available through archives). Trump’s
original plan placed four brackets at 0%, 10%, 20% and 25%.
“1.2% growth, the
weakest so-called recovery since the great depression.”
Since the US
recovery began in mid-2009, the economy has grown at an annual rate
of 2.1%, according to data from the commerce department. That is the
slowest recovery since 1949, by which point the US had emerged from
the great depression; the financial crisis of 2008 was the worst
since the stock market crash that began the great depression.
“There are now
93.4 million Americans outside of the labor force. It was 80.5
million when President Obama took office, an increase of 14 million.”
Trump cited accurate
BLS figures, and he was almost correct on the difference between 93.4
and 80.5. But he neglected to mention that more than five million
people have also joined the labor force since Obama took office in
2009. He also neglected to mention demographics; the baby boomer
generation is retiring out of the workforce.
“Home ownership is
at its lowest rate in 51 years.”
Trump has this
figure correct: as of the second quarter this year, 62.9% of
households owned a home, down from 63.4%, according to the Census
Bureau.
“More than 12
million people have been added to the food stamp.”
As of April 2016,
43,571,080 people were enrolled in the Snap assistance program,
according to the Food Research and Action Center, meaning an increase
of about 12 million from December 2008, when 31.5 million Americans
were enrolled. But 14.7 million people enrolled for food assistance
under George W Bush, with a 17% increase from 2007 to 2008 alone.
Advertisement
“Fifty-eight per
cent of the African American youth are either outside of the labor
force or not employed.”
Unemployment rates
for young African Americans with a high school degree – 17 to 20
years old – are high, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
But EPI’s figures are slightly different from Trump’s: the
institute places this very specific demographic at 19.5% unemployed
and 37% “underemployed”; for young college-aged graduates
(21-24), unemployment is 7.2% and underemployment 14.9%. These are
still startlingly higher than the population for other Americans, but
not the same figure cited by Trump.
“The 5%
[unemployment] figure is one of the biggest hoaxes in modern American
politics.”
Trump provided no
evidence for this claim, and has for months asserted that real
unemployment could be as high as 42%.
He is correct to
point out that people who aren’t looking for work are a
longstanding concern – but the BLS has a statistic for that too,
called “labor underutilization”. In July, this broader rate was
10.1%, twice the unemployment number but still far below its rate
five years ago – it was as high as 15.2% in December 2011.
“The United States
also has the highest business tax rate among the major industrialized
nations of the world, at 35% ... ”
Trump adjusted his
previous false claim that the US is one of the highest taxed
countries in the world to a more specific and more correct one, about
corporate tax rates – which he elides slightly by calling a
“business tax rate”. The US corporate income tax rate does rank
among the highest among industrialized nations, according to the
OECD. But Trump’s claim doesn’t take into account deductions and
other exemptions – the kind that helped General Motors and dozens
of other corporations escape paying any taxes in recent years.
“The Obama-Clinton
war on coal has cost Michigan over 50,000 jobs.”
Trump appears to
have drawn this figure from a study in the journal Energy Policy,
which found the coal industry lost about 49,000 jobs from 2008 to
2012. He failed to mention that a major factor in this decline was
the rise of natural gas, solar and wind industries, which had an
employment increase of 175,000 jobs. Natural gas, especially, cut
into the coal industry.
Advertisement
“We’ve seen it
from President Obama, when he gives $150bn to Iran, the number one
terror state, and even gives them $400m in money-laundered cash as a
ransom payment.”
The US has not given
$150bn to Iran; it released billions of Iran’s money frozen by
sanctions related to the country’s nuclear program. Estimates vary
regarding how much of that money Iran will actually see: the treasury
secretary, Jack Lew, has put the number at $56bn, Iranian officials
between $32bn and$100bn.
Similarly, the $400m
in question stems from a dispute over a failed arms deal in the late
1970s, which has been under arbitration at the Hague for decades. The
money was delivered in foreign currency because it is illegal under
US law to have transactions with Iran in US dollars, and because
remaining sanctions are major obstacles to global banks. A small
group of US sailors was captured the same month of the scheduled
delivery, and released less than a day later.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário