FactChecking Trumps State of the Union

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Summary

President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address was filled with several repeat claims about the economy, tax cuts and immigration that we’ve fact-checked before, as well as new false and misleading statements on auto plants, judicial appointments and development aid.

Trump claimed credit for 2.4 million new jobs “since the election,” when more than a half a million of those jobs were created under then-President Obama.

He claimed that wages are “finally” going up, when they’ve been on a generally upward trend since the 1990s.

Trump boasted that the African American unemployment rate was the “lowest rate ever recorded” and that Hispanic unemployment was at the “lowest levels in history.” True, but both rates have been in steady decline for about seven years. And the recent Hispanic rate matches the record low in October 2006.

Trump falsely said car companies have not built or expanded plants in the U.S. “for decades.” Two new assembly plants were announced and others expanded in the last nine years.

The president said he had appointed “more circuit court judges than any new administration” in history. True, but appointments by Presidents Nixon and Kennedy had a greater impact since there were far fewer appellate court seats back then.

Trump said the U.S. does “more than any other country … to help the needy, the struggling, and the underprivileged all over the world.” In raw dollars of development aid, it’s true. But as a proportion of gross national income, the U.S. ranked 22nd in 2016.

The president wrongly said that the U.S. is “an exporter of energy to the world.” The Energy Information Administration estimates the U.S. won’t be a net exporter of energy until 2026.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/factcheck/factchecking-trumps-state-of-the-union/ar-BBIuVxy?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=edgsp