The Last Time Trump Spoke At The Economic Club, He Lied A Lot
November 12, 2019
Today, Trump will deliver remarks at the New York Economic Club, where he will likely make a lot of promises that he won’t keep. How do we know that? That’s exactly what happened the last time he went. See for yourself:
PROMISE: Trump promised his economic plan would would generate 3.5% growth.
Trump at the New York Economic Club in 2016: “Over the next 10 years, our economic team estimates that under our plan the economy will average 3.5% growth and create a total of 25 million new jobs.”
REALITY: The economy has fallen well short of that target every year.
2017: “The overall GDP growth rate stands at 2.2 percent, down from 2.3 percent previously reported, with similar slight changes to years before that.”
2018: “By another commonly used method of calculating annual growth — which looks at G.D.P. over full years, not just comparing the fourth quarter of each year — the economy fell just short of that benchmark, coming in at 2.9 percent.”
2019: “GDP — the broadest measure of economic activity — grew at an annual rate of just 1.9% during the third quarter. That’s a deceleration from the lackluster second quarter, when GDP grew at a 2% pace. At this point, it would take an economic miracle to achieve the 3.2% growth rate for the full year predicted in the president’s budget.”
PROMISE: Trump promised to stop the loss of U.S. auto jobs from Ford and GM.
Trump at the New York Economic Club in 2016: “What we’re doing is Ford, Ford has announced just yesterday that they’re moving their small car production facilities to Mexico. I’ve been talking about this a long while and I think that’s maybe one of the reasons that we’re doing so well in Ohio and Michigan, and lots of other places where cars and parts are involved. To think that Ford is moving it’s small car division is a disgrace, it’s disgraceful. It’s disgraceful that our politicians allow them to get away with it, really is. It used to be cars were made in Flint, and you couldn’t drink the water in Mexico. Now, cars are made in Mexico and you can’t drink the water in Flint. We’re going to turn this around.”
REALITY: Both companies announced massive layoffs since Trump took office, and the economy has lost more than 11,000 auto jobs under his watch.
November 2018: GM Announced It Would Cut Up To 14,000 Jobs: “General Motors will lay off 14,000 factory and white-collar workers in North America and put five plants up for possible closure as it restructures to cut costs and focus more on autonomous and electric vehicles.”
May 2019: Ford Announced It Would Cut 7,000 Jobs: “The company’s cuts will total 7,000 workers by the end of August, including voluntary buyouts and involuntary layoffs and reductions that have already occurred.”
January 2017 – October 2019: The Economy Lost 11,200 Auto Jobs: “January 2017: 954.8 (thousand)… October 2019: 943.6 (thousand)”
PROMISE: Trump promised his economic plan would not increase the budget deficit.
Trump at the New York Economic Club: “Look at the math. It works. This growth means that our jobs and plans, including our child care reforms that Ivanka Trump, my daughter, is so involved in … I like her too … will be completely paid for, in combination with proposed budget savings. It will be deficit neutral. If we reach 4% growth, it will reduce the deficit.”
REALITY: The budget deficit has skyrocketed by nearly 50% under Trump.
Washington Post: “The U.S. government’s budget deficit ballooned to nearly $1 trillion in 2019, the Treasury Department announced Friday, as the United States’ fiscal imbalance widened for a fourth consecutive year despite a sustained run of economic growth. The deficit grew $205 billion, or 26 percent, in the past year. The country’s worsening fiscal picture runs in sharp contrast to President Trump’s campaign promise to eliminate the federal debt within eight years. The deficit is up nearly 50 percent in the Trump era.”
PROMISE: Trump promised his tax law would be focused on working Americans and the middle class, and that the wealthiest Americans would get virtually nothing.
Trump at the New York Economic Club: “By lowering rates, streamlining deductions and simplifying the process, we will add millions and millions of new jobs. In addition, because we have strongly capped deductions for the wealthy and closed special interest loopholes, the tax relief will be concentrated on the working and middle-class taxpayer. They will receive the biggest benefit, and it won’t even be close. They have been forgotten. We are not going to forget them.”
Trump at the New York Economic Club: “By contrast, someone earning $5 million, like the people in this room, will receive virtually no change in their tax bill at all.”
REALITY: The wealthiest 1% get most of the benefits from Trump’s tax law.
Washington Post: “10 percent. The share of the tax cut going directly to the middle class, according to a new JCT look at the blended package that House and Senate negotiators forged last week.”
Vox: “By 2027, more than half of all Americans — 53 percent — would pay more in taxes under the tax bill agreed to by House and Senate Republicans, a new analysis by the Tax Policy Center finds. That year, 82.8 percent of the bill’s benefit would go to the top 1 percent, up from 62.1 under the Senate bill.”
Yahoo: “Corporations paid $91 billion less in taxes in 2018 under Trump’s tax law”
PROMISE: Trump promised to bring back coal mining and steel industry jobs.
Trump at the New York Economic Club: “We’re going to put our great miners and our steelworkers back to work.”
REALITY: Trump failed to rescue the steel and coal industries.
Fox News: “President Trump pledged to rejuvenate the steel industry during his campaign, which had helped him win votes in the 2016 election in such key states as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. However, those states are largely continuing to wait for an economic boom… The industry has added 1,800 jobs since February 2018, the month before the tariffs took effect. That would represent rounding error in a job market of 152 million and over a period when U.S. companies overall added nearly 4 million workers. Steelmakers have employed 10,000 fewer people than they did five years ago.”
CNBC: “Pledges by President Donald Trump to save the U.S. coal industry and boost so-called clean coal technology are proving to be no match for the free market… Government forecasts from the U.S. Energy Information Administration call for a 10% drop in coal production nationwide year-over-year in 2019, with further declines expected next year. In the past five years, output is down 27%.”
PROMISE: Trump promised to bring the trade deficit down “so fast.”
Trump at the New York Economic Club: “America’s annual trade deficit with the world is now almost $800 billion a year. Who were negotiating these deals? Anybody in this room negotiating these wonderful deals? Think of it. We have a trade deficit of almost $800 billion a year. That’s going to change so fast.”
REALITY: The trade deficit has grown even larger under Trump.
Axios: “President Trump’s trade war has led to even bigger trade deficits with China, even though it was intended to improve the trade balance. But it’s not just China — the deficit has increased with most of our other major trade partners, too.”
PROMISE: Trump promised to invest in infrastructure.
Trump at the New York Economic Club: “We will rebuild our roads, our bridges, our tunnels, our highways, our airports, schools, hospitals. We will rebuild everything.”
REALITY: Trump’s budget proposals have actually cut infrastructure spending, and his top economic adviser said not to expect any federal funding for infrastructure projects.
CNN Money: “But an analysis of the Trump budget finds that it cuts infrastructure spending overall by $55 billion, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Budget Model, a nonpartisan research organization.”
Larry Kudlow: “White House Economic Adviser Larry Kudlow has a message for states and business leaders planning the nation’s biggest infrastructure projects: we’ll cut red tape for you, but don’t expect a check from us. ‘Folks, we will give you the permits,’ Kudlow said at the North American Infrastructure Leadership Forum in Washington, D.C. Tuesday. ‘If you can figure out how to pay for it, go on ahead and do it.’”
PROMISE: Trump promised incomes would rise.
Trump at the New York Economic Club: “Jobs will return; incomes will rise; new factories will come rushing back to our shores.”
REALITY: Real wage growth has been stagnant for middle-class Americans.
2017: “This data shows that after Trump entered office, wages initially went up, then fell. For the fourth quarter of 2017, the figure was $345. That’s slightly below the $349 mark in the fourth quarter of 2016, before Trump entered office.”
2018: “Adjusted for inflation, median weekly wages rose just 0.6 percent in 2018. The gains in weekly wages were 2.1 percent in 2015.”
2019: “By several measures, middle-class Americans’ incomes have risen more slowly under Trump than during Barack Obama’s final years — hardly a period renowned for gangbuster pay increases. Workers should finally be getting big raises with the unemployment rate down to 3.5%. Yet while wage growth picked up last year, it is still subdued and slowing again after manufacturing output contracted in the first half of the year.”