Fact check: John Deere says Trump’s story about how he saved US jobs with a tariff threat is fictional

Washington (CNN) — When former President Donald Trump was challenged at a Tuesday event about the potential economic harms of his proposal for across-the-board tariffs on imported goods, Trump told what sounded like a tariff success story.

He said that in response to his threat to impose hefty tariffs on John Deere if the storied American farm equipment maker went ahead with a plan to move some production from the US to Mexico, the company had just announced it was likely abandoning that outsourcing plan.

Trump said: “Are you ready? John Deere, great company. They announced about a year ago they’re gonna build big plants outside of the United States. Right? They’re going to build them in Mexico … I said, ‘If John Deere builds those plants, they’re not selling anything into the United States.’ They just announced yesterday they’re probably not going to build the plants, OK? I kept the jobs here.”

But a search of news articles and corporate press releases showed nothing about any such John Deere announcement the day prior. And in response to Trump’s story, a John Deere spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News that it had not changed its plans or announced any such changes.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a CNN request for any evidence for the former president’s story.

Trump has told numerous fictional tales in recent weeks. Aside from the John Deere story, the Republican presidential nominee made at least 19 false claims at the Tuesday event, which was a public interview at the Economic Club of Chicago that was conducted by John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News.

Harris, migrants and criminals: Trump, criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris on immigration, again falsely described a recently released set of statistics about immigrants in the US with homicide convictions, claiming again that the figures are specifically about people who entered the country during the Biden-Harris administration: “It came out that 13,099 were let in, during their administration – they tried to say longer, wrong: over the last three-and-a-half years – 13,000-plus people came in: murderers.”

In reality, these figures are about people who entered the country over decades, including during Trump’s own administration, not just under Biden and Harris. And, critically, the figures include people who are currently incarcerated in federal, state and local prisons and jails. You can read more here.

Guns and the Capitol riot: Trump, speaking of rioters at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, repeated his false claim that “not one of those people had a gun.” It has been proven in court that multiple rioters had guns – in addition to stun guns, knives, chemical sprays and numerous other weapons.

The size of the Capitol riot: Trump correctly noted that the Washington, DC, rally he addressed prior to the Capitol riot was peaceful, but then wrongly described the size of the riot, saying, “I don’t know what you had – five, six, seven hundred people – go down to the Capitol.”

Trump’s figures are way off. The Justice Department said in an official update earlier this month that about 1,532 defendants had, so far, been federally charged with crimes associated with the attack on the Capitol. The FBI said in 2021 that “approximately 2,000 individuals are believed to have been involved with the siege” and the actual number might well be hundreds higher.

Inflation under Trump: Trump repeated his false claim that there was “no inflation” over his four years as president. Cumulative inflation during Trump’s presidency was about 8%.

Inflation under Biden: Trump also falsely claimed, “Biden went two years with no inflation, because he inherited from me. And then they started spending money like drunken sailors.” Cumulative inflation during Biden’s first two years as president was about 14%, and inflation increased sharply in Biden’s first months as president in 2021. In fact, the Biden-era peak for year-over-year inflation, about 9.1% in June 2022, happened within Biden’s first two years as president.

Supreme Court justices: Trump correctly said that he was able to appoint three Supreme Court justices, but he falsely added, “Most presidents don’t even get to put a Supreme Court judge in.” Just four presidents didn’t get to appoint a Supreme Court justice, as PolitiFact previously reported when Trump made a similar claim; three of those four presidents served less than a full term.

Who pays tariffs: Trump repeated his false claim that, through tariffs, “We got hundreds of billions of dollars just from China alone.” US importers make the actual tariff payments, not China, and study after study has found that Americans bore the overwhelming majority of the cost of Trump’s tariffs on China.

Previous presidents and tariffs on China: Trump repeated his false claim that no previous president had imposed tariffs on Chinese imports, saying, “Not one president charged China anything.” The US was generating billions per year in revenue from tariffs on Chinese imports before Trump took office; in fact, the US has had tariffs on Chinese imports since 1789. And while Trump specifically named President Barack Obama as a president who didn’t “charge” China, Obama imposed additional tariffs on Chinese goods.

Trade with the European Union: Trump falsely claimed of the European Union: “Farm products – you know, they don’t want our farm – they don’t want anything from us.” The US exported more than $639 billion worth of total goods and services to the European Union in 2023. The federal government says the EU was the fifth-largest 2022 export market for US agricultural and related products, behind China, Canada, Mexico and Japan.

The trade deficit with the European Union: Trump falsely claimed the US has “a trade deficit of $300 billion with the European Union”; he then increased the figure to “$350 billion.” The US goods and services trade deficit with the European Union was about $125 billion in 2023. Even counting goods trade alone and excluding services, the 2023 deficit was about $201 billion.

Venezuela and migration: Trump repeated his false claim that Venezuela has emptied its prisons to send criminals to the US as migrants, then added in his recently introduced false claim that “they load up the buses and they drive them into the United States, and they’re dropping their prisoners into our country.”

Experts have told CNN, PolitiFact and FactCheck.org that they know of no evidence that Venezuela has emptied prisons for migration purposes; Trump has never corroborated that claim, let alone his new claim about Venezuelan authorities somehow busing criminals into the US.

The US and NATO: Trump repeated his false claim that, until he became president, the US was “spending almost 100% for NATO.” Official NATO figures show that in 2016, the last year before Trump took office, US defense spending made up about 71% of total defense spending by NATO members – a large majority, but not “almost 100%.” And Trump’s claim is even more inaccurate if he was talking about the direct contributions that cover NATO’s organizational expenses, which are set based on each country’s national income; the US was responsible for about 22% of those contributions in 2016.

Trump and Nord Stream 2: Trump claimed that, as president, “The first thing I did was terminated Nord Stream 2,” a Russian natural gas pipeline to Germany.

But Trump didn’t terminate the pipeline, let alone do so as his first act in office. In reality, he signed sanctions related to the pipeline into law about three years into his presidency, when the pipeline was already about 90% complete. The state-owned Russian company behind the project announced in December 2020, while Trump was still president, that construction was resuming.

In addition, Trump repeated his false claim that, before he opposed the project, “Nobody ever heard of Nord Stream 2.” Nord Stream 2 was a regular subject of media, government and diplomatic discussion before Trump took office. In fact, Joe Biden publicly criticized it as vice president in 2016.

Trump and ISIS: Trump repeated his false claim that “I knocked out ISIS in a matter of weeks; it was supposed to take four to five years, I did it in a matter of weeks.” The ISIS “caliphate” was declared fully liberated more than two years into Trump’s presidency.

South Korea’s payments for the US military presence: Trump repeated his false claim that before his presidency, South Korea paid “nothing” for the US military presence there. He claimed that when he started trying to get South Korea to pay, the country responded, “We will not. We haven’t paid since the Korean War.”

South Korea has been paying for the US military presence for decades. In 2014, more than two years before Trump took office, South Korea agreed to pay the US about $867 million that year and then, through 2018, to increase the payments annually based on the rate of inflation. The Congressional Research Service wrote in a 2023 report: “In the past, South Korea generally paid for 40%-50% (over $800 million annually) of the total non-personnel costs of maintaining the U.S. troop presence in South Korea.”

US troops in South Korea: Trump falsely claimed, as he has before, that the US has “40,000 troops” in South Korea.

Pentagon statistics show that Trump’s figure is a significant exaggeration, whether he was talking about troop levels under Biden or the situation when he took office. As of June 30, 2024, there were 27,076 US military personnel in South Korea, including civilians working for the Department of Defense, according to those official statistics; as of December 31, 2016, less than a month before Trump took office, it was 26,878.

Trump’s negotiations with South Korea: Trump falsely claimed that after demanding that South Korea pay $5 billion per year for the US military presence there, “they agreed to $2 (billion); I got $2 billion for nothing.” In reality, the one-year deal to which South Korea agreed in 2019 was for roughly $925 million, not $2 billion; Trump, who continued to make demands for far greater sums, was unable to secure a longer-term deal while he was president.

Biden’s deal with South Korea: Trump repeated his false claim that under Biden, South Korea is back to paying “nothing” for the US military presence, saying, “Because it went back to Biden and they gave it to them for nothing.”

In fact, South Korea agreed under Biden and Harris to pay more for the US military presence than it had been paying during the Trump era. Completing the negotiations that began under Trump, South Korea agreed in March 2021 to a 2021 payment increase of 13.9% — meaning its payment that year would be about $1 billion — and then additional increases in 2022 through 2025 tied to increases in South Korea’s defense budget.

The two countries reached a tentative agreement early this month for another deal covering the period from 2026 to 2030, which would begin with an 8.3% increase over the 2025 payment.

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