RAPPLER | Philippine & World News | Investigative Journalism | Data | Civic Engagement | Public Interest14h agoFACT CHECK: Arroyo not the new House speaker, did not junk impeachment raps vs VP Sara
RAPPLER | Philippine & World News | Investigative Journalism | Data | Civic Engagement | Public Interest14h ago
Nonilex[facts cont]
The White House website offers a far lower number, $10.5 trillion, & that figure appears to include some investment commitments made during the #Biden admin.
A study published in January raised doubts about whether more than $5 trillion in investment commitments made last year by many of America’s biggest trading partners will actually materialize & questions how it would be spent if it did.
#FactCheck #TrumpLies #economy #Trump
https://apnews.com/article/trump-economy-investment-foreign-2f7dc458d48f044c31fbc9128e867206
Trump's trillion-dollar investment promises face skepticism
President Donald Trump strong-armed America’s biggest trading partners into pledging trillions of dollars of investment in the United States. But a study out Tuesday raises doubts about whether the money will actually materialize and questions how it would be spent if it did. “How realistic are these commitments?’’ write Gregory Auclair and Adnan Mazarei of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “The short answer is that they are clouded with uncertainty.’’ They looked at more than $5 trillion in investment commitments made last year by the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the Persian Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
CLAIM: #Trump cited “record-setting setting investments coming into the United States, over $18 trillion.”
THE FACTS: Trump has presented NO evidence that he’s secured this much domestic or foreign investment in the US. Based on statements from various companies, foreign countries & the White House’s own website, that figure appears to be exaggerated, highly speculative & far higher than the actual sum [total bullshit].
[facts cont]
#Oil is a commodity, “the price of which is set in a global market,” University of Chicago #energy analyst Sam Ori said before Trump’s speech, “& a disruption anywhere affects the price everywhere.’’ Which is why the price of benchmark #US crude oil is up more than 50% since the #Iran #war began, & the average price of US gallon of #gasoline cracked $4 a gallon this week.
#FactCheck #TrumpLies #IranWar #Trump #economy #energy #GasPrices
CLAIM: “We’re now totally independent of the #MiddleEast, & yet we are there to help. We don’t have to be there. We don’t need their #oil.”
THE FACTS: It’s true that the #US is by far the world’s leading producer of oil & relies on the Persian Gulf for a fraction (8.5% in 2025) of the oil it imports. But, as is obvious at US gas pumps, that doesn’t mean it is unaffected by the turmoil in the Middle East.
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However, HRANA said thousands more may have been killed, though internet & communication restrictions in #Iran since have made verifying the reports incredibly difficult. It put total arrests at more than 53,000.
Iran’s government, which long has played down death tolls in other unrest, offered its only toll on Jan. 21, saying 3,117 people were killed.
CLAIM: “This murderous regime also recently killed 45,000 of their own people who were protesting in Iran.”He offered no evidence to support those figures.
THE FACTS: A death toll that high has not been verified.
The US based group Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in multiple rounds of demonstrations in #Iran, said it confirmed the deaths of just over 7,000 people in the nationwide protests that reached their apex in January.
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The monthlong #war has seen #Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard [#IRGC] grow even more ascendant. Iran’s civilian leadership — broadly untouched by the war — acknowledges it has little command & control over the Guard’s actions.
Both #Trump & #Israel have signaled they would tell the Iranian people to rise up at a point in the war to take back their government. That hasn’t happened.
CLAIM: “#RegimeChange was not our goal. We never said regime change, but regime change has occurred because of all of their original leaders’ death. They’re all dead. The new group is less radical & much more reasonable.”
FACTS: #Trump’s depiction of the new #Iran leadership stretches credulity.
Israel’s airstrike at the start of the war killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali #Khamenei. Iran then installed his son, Mojtaba, who is even more hard-line, as supreme leader.
[Facts cont]
Last year, in fact, #US economic growth decelerated under #Trump to a still-respectable 2.1%, partly because the 43-day federal government #shutdown slashed growth from October through December.
Nor has #inflation vanished. The #Labor Department’s #consumer price index was up 2.4% in February compared with a year earlier. It’s still above the #FederalReserve’s 2% target.