Fact check: Trump is wrong about China, Japan and the EU in the cabinet

Fact check: Trump is wrong about China, Japan and the EU in the cabinet

Washington - In a number of statements during a cabinet meeting, President Donald Trump made numerous false claims on Thursday, including inaccurate statements on the relationships between the USA with China, Japan and the European Union.

facts test of the statements of Trump

Here follows a factual examination of some of his statements that were previously refuted by CNN.

The US trade deficit with China

Trump repeated his wrong claim that "China had a surplus of 1 trillion dollar" in trade with the United States. This statement is not correct. In fact, Official state statistics that the US trade deficit in the goods and service transactions in 2024 Billions of dollars. Even if you exclude service transactions in which the United States are strong and only considered the trade in goods, the 2024 deficit was about $ 295 billion.

The USA has never achieved a 1 billion dollar trade deficit with China. The deficit in the goods trial alone at Trump in 2018 reached a record with around 418 billion dollar before it was again under 400 billion in the following years Dollar fell.

Who pays the tariffs in China?

Trump again repeated his wrong claim that China had paid the United States to the United States for billions of dollars during his first term. The fact is that not foreign exporters such as China, but US importers Die Zölle pay. Studies have shown that the Americans have borne the vast majority of Trump's tariffs in China. There are numerous Concrete examples of companies that have passed on the costs of the tariffs to the US consumers.

The US military presence in Japan

Trump mistakenly claimed that the United States had an agreement with Japan in which the United States defend Japan and spend "hundreds of billions of dollars", while "We pay all of the money; you pay nothing." In fact, Japan does billions of dollars every year to support the US military presence in the country.

The office for responsibility of the Federal Government provided in a Report of 2021 Dollar "in cash payments and in the form of financial support" for the US military presence. In addition, Japan had "indirect support, such as awarding rents for land and institutions used by US troops, as well as revenue taxes." During the same period, the US Department of Defense issued $ 20.9 billion for military presence in Japan.

The foundation of the European Union

Trump repeated his false claim that the European Union was "founded for the purpose of exploiting the United States." Experts on the European Union have announced that there are no basis for such statements and pointed out that the US presidents have always supported the efforts to integrate in Europe.

"The president's claims are absurd," said Desmond dinan Integration. "The European Communities (ancestors of the EU) were founded in the 1950s as part of a common US western plan to stabilize and secure Western Europe and should promote prosperity in transatlantic space through trade liberalization and economic growth."

John O’Brennan, professor of European politics at Maynooth University in Ireland, said in an interview this week that Trump's statement could not be "incorrect or inaccurate" and added that it was "bizarre in contradiction to history" - in which the USA provides decisive support for European integration and continued to support them in the following decades.

inflation during Trump's first term

Trump repeated his false claim that he had lived "for four years without inflation", and shortly afterwards qualified this statement by saying, "we essentially had no inflation." Although he used the word "essentially", there was actually a certain inflation during his first four years in office; The prices rose to approx. 8% from the beginning of its presidency to the end. The annual inflation was 1.4%.

migration, prisons and psychiatres

Trump repeated his well -known claim that foreign leaders in countries allegedly emphasized their prisons, "psychiatric institutions" and "crazy asylums" in order to "dump" people during Joe Biden's presidency as migrants to the USA. There is no evidence of Trump's claim that Trump's own presidential campaign 2024 could not prove. (The campaign was provide that South American countries in particular actually empty their psychiatric institutions to bring patients to the USA.)

Trump sometimes tried to underpin his claim by making another claim that the global prison population had decreased under bidges. That is also wrong. The recorded global prison population rose from October 2021 to April 2024 from about 10.77 million people on about 10.99 million people , according to the World Prison Population List.

"I do a news research every day to see what is going on in prisons around the world, and I have not seen any evidence that any country emptied his prisons and sends them all into the USA," said Helen Fair , co -author of the prison population list and research scholarship holder at the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research at Birkbeck, University of London, in June 2024, when Trump made a similar claim.

the border wall

Trump repeated his wrong claim that he built "571 miles border wall" on the southern border "in the first term". This is a considerable exaggeration; Official government data show Walls where there were no barriers before, as well as walls that should replace old barriers.

Kommentare (0)