Verification of Trump’s speech

The former president Donald Trump announced his re-election bid Tuesday night in a speech at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

During the speech, he discussed US energy policies, the border wall and tax cuts.

Let’s check the accuracy of speech and this is what we found.

OIL AND GAS

“Naphtha prices have reached the highest levels in history. And expect them to go much higher now that the National Strategic Reserves, which I filled, have been virtually depleted to keep gasoline prices low just before the election. Joe Biden intentionally gave up our energy independence,” Trump said.

This is over the top.

Neither has Trump completely filled the Strategic Oil Reserve nor has Biden nearly emptied it.

Since the first oil was delivered to the reserve in 1977, it has stored the largest amount of oil under the former president Barack Obamaabout 726 million barrels.

Under Trump, the amount has fluctuated between 634 million and 695 million barrels.

Under Biden it fell to about 445 million barrels in August, the month with the most recent numbers.

So is the idea that the US gained “energy” under Trump and reversed the course of independence under Biden misleading.

Even before Trump took office, the United States was designed to become a net exporter of energy in the 2020s “because favorable geology and technological developments result in lower-cost oil and natural gas production,” according to the Energy Information Administration.

The country became a net exporter of oil in 2020, for the first time since at least 1949.

So it remained in 2021.

It became a net exporter of natural gas in 2018 and still is today, with exports hitting record highs in 2021.

The term “energy independencemay also suggest that the US was not dependent on imports at all.

This is also false.

In 2020, the United States again it imported 7.9 million barrels of crude oil and other petroleum products per day.

IMMIGRATION AND DRUGS

“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 coming in, not 3 or 4 million people, they are coming to our country. We have no idea who they are and where they come from. We have no idea what is happening to our country and we have been poisoned,” Trump said.

Impostor.

The Trump administration built 450 miles of border wall in four years, with the vast majority of new barriers either reinforcing or replacing existing structures.

Of these, about 76 kilometers were new primary barriers.

The southwestern border of the United States with Mexico is over 3,050 kilometers.

The number of migrants stopped at the border could be seen as an indicator of those crossing undetected.

The numbers could also indicate a question more effective.

Border Patrol agents apprehended 400,000 immigrants who entered the United States illegally in the 2020 fiscal year.

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 320,000 kilos of drugs on the southwestern border.

Many other factors besides border security also influence migration patterns and drug trafficking:

economic conditions e security of the country of origin, drug supply and demand, terrain and weather conditions, among others.

“Changes in drug trafficking may not always be directly linked to changes in border security efforts,” the Congressional Research Service noted.

TRUMP TAX CUT

“Businesses were coming back in droves because of our historic tax and regulatory cuts, the largest in both categories in history, bigger even than Ronald Reagan could produce. And he produced a lot,” Trump said.

Impostor.

Trump has repeatedly falsely claimed that the 2017 tax cut he signed is the “biggest” in history.

According to a Treasury Department report, the tax cut for reagan of 1981 is the largest by percentage of the economy (2.9% of gross domestic product) and by reduced federal revenues (a 13.3% decline).

Obama’s 2012 tax cut represented the largest cut in inflation-adjusted dollars: $321 billion annually.

By comparison, Trump’s tax cut in 2017 was about $150 million a year and accounted for about 0.9% of gross domestic product.

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