“When we handed over a stock market that was substantially higher than just prior to covid coming in, did a great job, never got credit for that.”
Trump as president frequently touted the rise of stock prices during his presidency. The S&P 500 index gained about 70 percent during his first term. But it has gone up 50 percent under Biden. Moreover, the record under Barack Obama beat both men.
“The biggest tax cuts ever.”
This is also one of Trump’s favorite falsehoods. Trump’s tax cut amounted to nearly 0.9 percent of the gross domestic product, meaning it was far smaller than President Ronald Reagan’s tax cut in 1981, which was 2.89 percent of GDP.
Trump’s tax cut is the eighth-largest tax cut in the past century — and even smaller than two tax cuts passed under President Barack Obama. Trump’s tax cut was heavily tilted toward the wealthy and corporations.
“The biggest regulation cuts ever.”
Trump’s claim of the most or biggest regulation cuts cannot be easily verified and appears to be false. There is no reliable metric on which to judge this claim — or to compare him to previous presidents. Many experts say the most significant regulatory changes in U.S. history were the deregulation of the airline, rail and trucking industries during the Carter administration, which are estimated to provide consumers with $70 billion in annual benefits. A detailed November 2020 report by the Penn Program on Regulation concluded that “without exception, each major claim we have uncovered by the President or other White House official about regulation turns out to be exaggerated, misleading, or downright untrue.” The report said that the Trump administration had not reduced the overall number of pages from the regulatory code book and that it completed far more regulatory actions than deregulatory ones once the full data set was examined.
“ ‘Right to Try’ was a big deal. We got Right to Try. They were trying to get that for 52 years.”
Right to Try wasn’t a protracted battle — the idea emerged in 2013. (Trump often falsely claims it was a 45-year or 50-year battle, or as he did here, 52 years.) The initiative allowed for the use of experimental drugs, not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as a last resort for those unable to participate in clinical testing who have also exhausted all other treatment options. The FDA had already approved 99 percent of requests for access to unapproved drugs, but supporters thought these policies too restrictive.
“We have an inflation crisis that is making life unaffordable, ravaging the incomes of working and low-income families, and crushing, just simply crushing, our people like never before.”
The monthly inflation headlines are often about the year-over-year inflation rate, as measured by changes in the consumer price index. Inflation reached a high of 9 percent in June 2022. Annualized inflation has dropped significantly since then. The year-over-year figure in June was 3.0 percent — a significant drop.
Inflation initially spiked because of pandemic-related shocks — increased consumer demand as the pandemic eased and an inability to meet this demand because of supply-chain issues, as companies had reduced production when consumers hunkered down during the pandemic. Indeed, inflation rose around the world — with many peer countries doing worse than the United States — because of pandemic-related shocks that rippled across the globe.
Wage growth lagged inflation initially in Biden’s term, but it has since caught up. Wages have risen 19.4 percent, compared to cumulative inflation of 19.2 percent. That’s basically treading water, but it’s not as dire as Trump claims.
“I will end the devastating inflation crisis immediately, bring down interest rates, and lower the cost of energy. We will drill, baby, drill.”
Trump has proposed a number of the policies that economists consider to be inflationary, such as a proposal for across-the-board tariffs. (Trump has thrown out a figure of 10 percent, but his staff has said the actual number has not been determined.) Trump has also suggested he would impose a 60 percent tariff on all Chinese goods. While Trump frequently claims tariffs are paid by countries, that’s wrong; the cost of the tariffs…
Read More: Fact-checking Trump on RNC’s Day 4