Throughout his address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, President Donald Trump produced a number of claims about a range of concerns, such as unemployment and immigration.
All through the speech, a group of journalists from ABC News will identify questionable statements and give context, detail and more facts and statistics.
Continue to verify back throughout the evening for updates.
What Trump mentioned: “By lastly enforcing our immigration laws, we will raise wages, support the unemployed, save billions of dollars, and make our communities safer for everybody.”
What we know: According to a main report last fall from the National Academies of Sciences, immigrants have “little to no unfavorable effects” on the wages or employment of native-born workers in the United States.
Instead, the greatest influence to wages was among previously arrived immigrants. That is to say, new immigrants can impact the jobs/employment of immigrants who have been in the U.S. longer.
To the extent that damaging wage effects have been found, native-born teens and particularly higher-school dropouts, who saw fewer hours of work, were some of the most impacted.
On crime, a number of scientific research conducted more than the previous numerous years contradict the concept that immigrants are accountable for a disproportionate share of crime While the government does not track the quantity of undocumented (or documented) immigrants that have committed crimes, studies have identified that immigrants in the U.S. are significantly less most likely to commit violent crime than U.S. citizens.
A 2015 study by the pro-immigrant, nonprofit American Immigration Council, located that “immigrants are less most likely to commit really serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born, and high prices of immigration are associated with decrease prices of violent crime and home crime.” This holds correct for each legal immigrants and the unauthorized, regardless of their country of origin or level of education, according to the study.
A 2016 study published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology essentially suggests that communities that recorded significant increases in immigration had a sharper reduction in crime compared to areas that had significantly less immigration.
What Trump stated: “Ninety-four million Americans are out of the labor force.”
What we know: This number, presented by Bureau of Labor Statistics information, is misleading. It includes every person more than 16 years old who is not working — folks who are higher school students, persons who are in college and people who are retired. These groups account for more than half of the number Trump cites. It also incorporates folks who are disabled or are remain-at-property parents. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts one more number -– “number of unemployed persons” — at 7.six million persons.
What Trump stated: “In the last eight years, the previous administration has put on a lot more new debt than almost all other presidents combined. We’ve lost additional than one particular-fourth of our manufacturing jobs given that NAFTA was authorized, and we’ve lost 60,000 factories since China joined the Planet Trade Organization in 2001. Our trade deficit in goods with the globe final year was practically $800 billion dollars.”
What we know: The national debt ballooned from $10.six trillion to $19.9 trillion below President Obama, according to the Treasury Division. The United States has lost roughly one particular-third of its manufacturing jobs given that NAFTA was approved, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The American trade deficit with the world final year was $734 billion, according to the Census.
What Trump said: “I am sending Congress a price range that rebuilds the military, eliminates the defense sequester, and calls for a single of the biggest increases in national defense spending in American history.”
What we know: President Trump has proposed a ten percent enhance equal to $54 billion that would boost the Defense Department’s price range subsequent year to $603 billion. The proposal has been met positively by Congressional Republicans, but Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Solutions Committee, has mentioned the improve is only $18.five billion above the level President Obama proposed for fiscal year 2018. McCain has proposed a defense budget of $640 billion for 2018 as a initially step to restore military readiness.
What Trump stated: “Due to the fact my election, Ford, Fiat-Chrysler, Common Motors, Sprint, Softbank, Lockheed, Intel, Walmart, and numerous other individuals, have announced that they will invest billions of dollars in the United States and will generate tens of thousands of new American jobs.”
What we know: The businesses President Trump named have made announcements about new jobs since his election. It’s unclear in some situations if Trump can take credit for these jobs.
Ford, for instance, told ABC News that the corporation “didn’t have any direct negotiations” with then President-elect Trump about the move to make 700 jobs right here and cancel plans to build a new plant in Mexico. But that Trump’s policy reforms –tax and also regulatory – “played a element in our selection creating. So in essence, yes he did play a aspect as we made some of the decisions.”
Similarly when each GM and Intel announced the jobs will be added, they credited their extended-term plans and common enterprise growth for the investments.
Corporations even though are fast to point to future optimism on pro-growth policies and tax reform.
What Trump stated: “We’ve saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by bringing down the cost of the wonderful new F-35 jet fighter, and will be saving billions a lot more dollars on contracts all across our government.”
What we know: Lockheed Martin, a government contractor, has been direct in crediting President Trump’s personal involvement in lowering expenses of the F-35 project. They said on February three that their agreement with the Defense Department for the next 90 F-35 aircraft represents $728 million in savings from their final contract and creates 1,800 new jobs. “President Trump’s private involvement in the F-35 system accelerated the negotiations and sharpened our concentrate on driving down the price tag,” the statement said.
The Pentagon and Lockheed Martin also announced that for the very first time the cost of new F-35 fighter aircraft had been lowered to much less than $100 million per plane. But the announcement was in line with currently current Pentagon cost projections for the subsequent lot of aircraft to be bought. Lockheed Martin has told the Pentagon that by 2019 it expects to have unit charges down to $85 million.
What Trump said: “The murder rate in 2015 seasoned its biggest single-year boost in almost half a century. In Chicago, much more than four,000 folks were shot last year alone –- and the murder rate so far this year has been even higher.”
What we know: The number of murders in the U.S. did have its biggest year-to-year improve in almost five decades from 2014 to 2015 — but it really is critical to note that violent crime in the United States has declined drastically more than the final two decades. Chicago accounts for nearly half of the enhance in murders more than the final year, according to information from the Key Cities Chiefs Police Association. In 2016, there were four,331 shooting victims in Chicago. And there were 51 murders in Chicago in January 2017 — one much more than the 50 murders in January 2016, according to the Chicago Police Division.
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