AP FACT CHECK: Trump is having it both ways on border policy
WASHINGTON » President Donald Trump was having it both ways over the past week, portraying a “crisis” at the Mexico border that demands the use of National Guard troops while boasting of a huge drop in illegal border crossings there.
A border crisis is in the eye of the beholder, but his claims about illegal entry into the U.S. were off.
Also in recent days, the president misrepresented his tax package’s place in history and the size of the U.S. trade deficit with China, a number at the heart of an intensifying trade clash between the economic superpowers. “The U.S. is losing $500 Billion a year,” he tweeted Saturday, inaccurately.
A look at some recent statements and the facts behind them:
TRUMP: “For 40 years, they couldn’t pass anything and they didn’t know why. I said, ‘How is it hard to pass tax cuts?’” — remarks Thursday in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.
THE FACTS: It’s not even close to true that Trump is the first president in 40 years to achieve tax cuts. Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and George W. Bush and Barack Obama in the 2000s each achieved several rounds of historically significant tax cuts, some bigger than Trump’s.
TRUMP: “Because of the Trump Administrations actions, Border crossings are at a still UNACCEPTABLE 46 year low. Stop drugs!” — tweet Thursday.
THE FACTS: Trump’s numbers are dated. He’s taking credit for a reduction in apprehensions at the Southwest border that began before he took office. The numbers have since risen to typical arrest rates seen during the Obama administration.
Arrests tend to follow a pattern. The numbers begin to rise late in winter, peak in the spring and dip as the Southwest heat becomes insufferable.
That pattern broke after Trump’s election. Arrests dipped after the election and plunged after Trump took office. April 2017 logged the fewest arrests in a single month since the Homeland Security Department was created in 2003. Indeed, thanks to that drop, the 2017 budget year logged the fewest Border Patrol arrests in 45 years.
But after April 2017, the numbers ticked up. In the autumn they returned to rates seen during Obama’s second term. New federal statistics show 50,308 arrests in March — a 203 percent increase from March 2017, when there were only 16,588 arrests, and 37 percent more than the previous month.
Trump called the numbers a “point of crisis” in his proclamation seeking National Guard deployment to the Southern border.
Apprehensions at the border are a useful gauge of illegal crossings but an imperfect one because nobody knows exactly how many people cross without being detected.
TRUMP: “The United States hasn’t had a Trade Surplus with China in 40 years. They must end unfair trade, take down barriers and charge only Reciprocal Tariffs. The U.S. is losing $500 Billion a year, and has been losing Billions of Dollars for decades. Cannot continue!” — tweet Saturday.
TRUMP: “We are not in a trade war with China, that war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the U.S. Now we have a Trade Deficit of $500 Billion a year, with Intellectual Property Theft of another $300 Billion. We cannot let this continue!” And: “When you’re already $500 Billion DOWN, you can’t lose!” — tweets Wednesday.
THE FACTS: He overstates the trade deficit with China by $163 billion.
He does this by counting Americans’ purchases of goods from China as a loss for the U.S., while ignoring what China buys from the U.S. He also ignores another big part of the equation — trade in services.
Last year, Americans bought about $505.6 billion in goods from China while China bought about $130.4 billion in goods from the U.S. So the actual trade deficit in goods was just over $375 billion.
Factor in trade in services and the actual U.S trade deficit with China was $337 billion.
As for intellectual property theft, it’s not clear where Trump gets his figure of $300 billion and it’s not possible to be precise about illicit activity such as counterfeit goods, pirated software, theft of trade secrets and so on. But various analyses suggest his estimate is plausible.
An independent bipartisan U.S. commission estimated in 2017 that U.S. interests lost $225 billion to $600 billion from worldwide intellectual property theft, with “thousands of Chinese actors” the main culprits.
WHITE HOUSE: “President Trump’s tax cuts are the biggest gross tax cuts in American history, with $5.5 trillion in gross tax cuts over ten years and $4.5 trillion in reforms.” — news release Thursday.
THE FACTS: What’s notable about this statement is that the White House is edging away from Trump’s frequent and false boast that the tax cuts are the largest ever, period. The new statement asserts that the “gross” tax cuts are the largest in history. But that’s still shoddy accounting.
The gross value of tax cuts is only one side of the ledger. The other side consists of “offsets” — various increases in certain taxes and fees, taxes created and reductions or eliminations of current tax breaks — that are used to pay for the cuts.
Economists, historians and lawmakers judge the significance of a tax package by its net effect. They measure or estimate the cost of net tax cuts to the treasury and compare that with the size of the overall economy — the gross domestic product.
By that measure, Trump’s package — “reforms” and all — considerably trails Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts, Obama’s 2013 extension of Bush’s tax cuts, and more.
The estimated cost of Trump’s package is $1.5 trillion over 10 years. In October, before the details were complete, the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget assumed a higher value to the package — $2.2 trillion. Even that more significant plan ranked as only the eighth largest in history as a percentage of GDP and fourth largest by another measure — inflation-adjusted dollars.