• The $18T investment claim is inflated fantasy math.
• GDP, trade deficit, inflation, and stock claims rely on cherry-picked dates or outdated projections.
• Manufacturing gains mostly came from Biden-era laws. Under Trump’s tariffs, jobs and spending are down.
• The “wars ended” and deficit-cut claims are accounting tricks and wishful thinking.
Bottom line:
It wasn’t analysis. It was a propaganda remix. Selective stats, bad timelines, and outright bullshit, all designed to sell tariffs that the real data says failed.
- The X post accurately summarizes CNN's fact-check of Trump's February 2026 WSJ op-ed, debunking claims like $18 trillion in U.S. investments as inflated from $9.6 trillion in vague pledges and a 77% trade deficit slash as a temporary October 2025 drop that reversed by November.
- Manufacturing gains attributed to Trump overlook a net loss of 63,000 jobs since January 2025 and a 5% drop in factory construction spending, with much growth stemming from Biden-era policies like the CHIPS Act.
- Trump's assertions of ending eight conflicts and cutting the deficit 27% rely on non-wars (e.g., dam disputes) and cherry-picked periods excluding one-time factors, while inflation at 2.7% in December 2025 contradicts "virtually no inflation" amid tariff hikes.
https://t.co/fMOmCNoTYn
www.msn.com/...
The trade deficit. Trump's op-ed claims that he has "slashed our monthly trade deficit by an astonishing 77%."
That would be astonishing. But in reality, the Census Bureau reported last week that the trade deficit increased—not decreased—by nearly 37 percent in November, the most recent month for which data are available. Through the first 11 months of 2025, the trade deficit was 4 percent higher than it had been in 2024. That is literally the opposite of what Trump is claiming.
Who pays the tariffs? "According to a recent study by the Harvard Business School," Trump wrote, foreign producers and middlemen "are paying at least 80% of tariff costs."
In fact, the paper he cited concludes that "tariffs led to both rapid and gradual retail price increases." The study found that "prices began rising within days of the March announcements and continued to increase steadily over subsequent months," and also that "imported goods rose roughly twice as much as domestic goods relative to pre-tariff trends."
Economic collapse? "When I imposed historic tariffs on nearly all foreign countries last April, the critics said my policies would cause a global economic meltdown," Trump wrote. That meltdown didn't occur, so that must prove the president right and his opponents wrong.
This is not the gotcha moment that the president seems to believe it is. Trump repeatedly backed down and eased tariff threats in the face of negative shocks from both the stock market and the bond market. The "Liberation Day" tariffs announced on April 2 were postponed a week later after a huge stock market sell-off, and those that were later imposed were at lower rates. A threatened 130 percent tariff on Chinese goods never materialized. No wonder "TACO"—"Trump Always Chickens Out"—entered the political and financial lexicon last year.
reason.com/...
