During his four years in the White House, former President Donald J. Trump lied more than 30,000 times. The American press diligently followed these statistics, counted them, and newspapers such as The New York Times They denounced it almost daily.
This Tuesday, when Trump announced in Florida his campaign for the presidency for the year 2024, the urban newspaper back to the old homework and found that the issuer had not lost the habit.
During the speech of just over an hour, which only the FoxNews network carried in its entirety, Trump discussed US energy policies, the border wall and tax cuts.
To begin with, the newspaper notes, Trump exaggerated his record on oil and gas.
“Gasoline prices have reached the highest levels in history. And expect them to go much higher now that the strategic national reserves, which I filled, have been virtually depleted to keep gas prices low just before the election. Joe Biden has intentionally given up on our energy independence,” he said.
The newspaper says: “this is exaggerated” because the former president “did not completely fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve nor did Biden almost empty it. Since the first oil was delivered to the reserve, in 1977, the largest storage of oil occurred under former President Barack Obama, around 726 million barrels.
Under Trump, the amount fluctuated between 634 million and 695 million barrels. With Biden it has fallen to about 445 million barrels in August, the month with the most recent figures. The idea that the United States gained “energy independence” under Trump and changed course under Biden is also misleading.
Trump announces his candidacy for the presidency in the 2024 elections
Even before Trump took office, the United States had been projected to become a net exporter of energy in the 2020s “because favorable geology and technological developments result in the production of oil and natural gas at lower costs.” low,” according to the Energy Information Administration.
The country became a net oil exporter only in 2020 and for the first time after World War II. It remained so in 2021. It became a net exporter of natural gas in 2018 and remains so today, with exports reaching record levels in 2021.
The term “energy independence” may also suggest that the United States was not dependent on imports at all. This is also false. In 2020, the United States imported 7.9 billion barrels of crude oil and other petroleum products.
In the speech, Trump also referred to the wall on the border with Mexico. During his previous campaign he said that the southern country would pay, but that fell to the American taxpayers. Furthermore, Trump’s incomplete border wall did not stop unauthorized immigration or drugs. This, again, is false.
“When the wall was finished, that’s how we set all these records. We have records that no one can compete with right now. It is a disaster. I think there are 10 million people entering, not three or four million people, they are coming to our country. We have no idea who they are, or where they came from. We have no idea what is happening to our country and we are being poisoned,” Trump said last Tuesday.
But it is totally false. During his administration the wall was not completed but only 453 miles were built over four years. The vast majority are new barriers that reinforced or replaced existing structures. Just 47 miles are new barriers. The southern border of the United States with Mexico is more than 1,900 miles, stressed the Times.
Additionally, the number of unauthorized migrants apprehended at the border could be seen as an indicator of those who cross undetected.
Border patrol agents apprehended some 400,000 unauthorized immigrants in fiscal year 2020. During that year, the last full year under Trump, the coronavirus pandemic caused disruptions to travel and migration around the world. Officials also seized about 707,000 pounds of drugs at the southern border.
Many other factors, beyond border security, affect migration patterns and drug smuggling: economic and security conditions in the country of origin of migrants, drug demand and supply, terrain and weather conditions, among others.
“Changes in drug smuggling cannot always be directly linked to changes in border security efforts,” a congressional investigation noted.
Another issue: Despite his claims, the Trump administration’s tax cut was not the biggest in history.
“Businesses were coming back in droves because of our historic tax and regulatory cuts, the biggest in either category in history, bigger even than Ronald Reagan could produce. And he produced a lot,” Trump said.
It is false, underline the Times. “Trump has falsely claimed time and again that the 2017 tax cut he signed into law is the ‘biggest’ ever.” But according to a Treasury Department report, Reagan’s 1981 tax cut is the largest as a percentage of the economy (2.9% of Gross Domestic Product, GDP) and by the reduction in federal revenue (a 13.3% decrease). .
The truth, says the Times, is that Obama’s tax cut in 2012 represented the largest cut in inflation-adjusted dollars: $321 billion a year. In a comparative perspective, Trump’s tax cut in 2017 was about $150 billion a year and represented about 0.9% of GDP.
