What Trump Said
“They broke the deal. They can’t do that. So they’ll be paying — if we don’t make the deal, nothing wrong with taking in over $100 billion a year, $100 billion, we never did that before.”
False.
A Chinese delegation is expected to travel Thursday to Washington to resume trade talks after negotiations faltered. Trump said Wednesday on Twitter that he would be “very happy” to keep existing tariffs on Chinese products and fill government coffers with $100 billion in tariff revenue, a sentiment he repeated during the rally Wednesday night.
That figure, however, is an exaggeration of an estimate. The Congressional Budget Office projected that tariffs would generate $74 billion in revenue in 2019, nearly double the $41 billion from 2018.
Tariffs used to make up a much more significant portion of all federal revenue, almost a third in 1915. In comparison, the $74 billion in tariffs that the government will collect in 2019 will be about 2% of total revenue.
What Trump Said
“The last administration also signed a disastrous trade deal with South Korea that cost our country nearly 100,000 — but it was really 250,000 jobs. And if you remember, our secretary of state at the time and our president at the time said, ‘This will give 250,000 jobs.’”
This is exaggerated.
Trump seemed to spontaneously revise his initial estimate of jobs lost because of the free trade agreement between the United States and South Korea, which was negotiated under President Barack Obama.
The first figure, “nearly 100,000” jobs, is backed by a study from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. The institute estimated that the trade deal helped eliminate 95,000 jobs from 2011 to 2015. (Some think tanks, like the Congressional Research Service, have questioned the study’s methodology, while other research estimated that the deal had negligible to modestly positive effects on employment.) The New York Times was unable to find a credible estimate for 250,000 lost jobs.
Similarly, the Obama administration had said the trade agreement would generate 70,000 jobs — not 250,000.
Other claims
Trump also repeated at least seven other claims The Times previously fact-checked:
— He falsely claimed Puerto Rico had already received $91 billion in disaster relief funding after Hurricane Maria. (The figure refers to how much the island could receive in the next two decades, while about $41 billion has been allocated thus far.)
— He falsely declared that the special counsel investigation found “no collusion, no obstruction.” (The special counsel’s report documented at least 10 episodes of possible obstruction of justice and declined to say that Trump had been exonerated of obstruction.)
— He falsely characterized having enacted the “largest” tax cuts in history. (Several others were larger.)
— He exaggerated when he said his rally in February in El Paso, Texas, drew 8,000 to 9,000 people, compared with 502 for Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic presidential candidate who held a rally there that same day. (Trump filled the arena to capacity at 6,500, and O’Rourke also drew thousands.)
— He exaggerated when he said, “Mexico made $100 billion in trade off us.” (The U.S. trade deficit with Mexico was $78.5 billion in 2018.)
— He misleadingly claimed that “prescription drug prices went down for the first time in 51 years.” (Prices are still increasing but at a slower pace than in previous years.)
— He misleadingly claimed that he and the Republican Party always protect pre-existing conditions. (Their actions prove otherwise.)
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.