Fact check: Trump makes false claims about immigration, tariffs and global conflicts

By Daniel Dale, CNN

Washington (CNN) — President-elect Donald Trump made numerous false claims in a Monday news conference at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

Trump also offered a noncommittal reply when he was asked if he believes there is a connection between vaccines and autism, saying that “right now, you have some very brilliant people looking at it” and that “we’re looking to find out.” Vaccines do not cause autism; the notion of a link between the two has been thoroughly disproven.

Here are some of the false claims Trump made at the Monday event.

California and the vote count: Trump falsely claimed that “they’re still counting the vote in California.” While it’s true that California does, for various reasons, take longer than other states to finish counting votes in federal elections, it is not still counting today; the state’s secretary of state certified the 2024 election results on Friday.

Europe and pesticides: Trump falsely claimed, “Europe doesn’t use pesticides, and yet they have a better mortality rate than we do. They don’t use pesticides.” Pesticides are widely used in Europe, though some particular pesticides that are used in the US are banned in the European Union.

Conflict under Trump: Trump repeated his familiar false claim that there were “no wars” during his presidency, this time saying, “Think of it: four years ago, we had no wars.”

In fact, there were dozens of unresolved wars and armed conflicts in late 2020 and when Trump left office in early 2021. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks armed conflict in countries around the world, said in a June email that it estimates there were active armed conflicts in 51 international states in 2020 and again active armed conflicts in 51 international states in 2021.

When Trump left office in early 2021, US troops were still deployed in combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq; civil wars in Syria, Yemen and Somalia continued, as did the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was also ongoing, as were the conflicts between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, between Israel and Syria and between Israel and Iran; Islamist insurgents continued their fight in Africa’s Sahel region; there was major violence in Mexico’s long-running drug wars; fighting continued between Ukraine and pro-Russian forces in Ukraine’s Donbas region; and there were lots of other unresolved wars and conflicts around the world.

Trump’s tax cut: Trump repeated his false claim that he signed “the biggest tax cuts in history.” Expert analyses have found that his 2017 tax cut law was not the largest in US history, either in percentage of gross domestic product or in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Tariffs on China: Trump repeated two of his regular false claims about tariffs on imported Chinese products. He falsely claimed that the US took in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs “from China” during his presidency, then falsely claimed that before his presidency, “no other president took in 10 cents, not 10 cents.”

The US was generating billions per year in revenue from tariffs on China before Trump took office; in fact, the US has had tariffs on Chinese imports since the 1700s. Second, US importers pay these tariffs, not China, and often pass on some or all of the cost to consumers. Study after study has found that Americans bore the overwhelming majority of the cost of Trump’s tariffs.

The 1890s and tariffs: Touting the supposed benefits of tariffs, Trump falsely claimed that the 1890s, when the US had very high tariffs, “was when we were at our – proportionately – the richest.” The US is far richer today than it was in the 1890s; per capita gross domestic product is now many times higher than it was then.

Inflation under Biden: Trump falsely claimed that under President Joe Biden’s administration, “we had inflation the likes of which, I say – I don’t believe the country has ever seen inflation like that. They say ‘38 years,’ I don’t know; I think it’s probably ever.” There is no basis for Trump’s repeated suggestions that the US had its highest inflation of all time under Biden. Even at the Biden-era peak for year-over-year inflation, 9.1% in June 2022, the inflation rate was the worst in about 40 years, nowhere close to the all-time record of 23.7%, set in 1920. (The most recent year-over-year rate, for November 2024, is 2.7%.)

Inflation under Trump: Trump repeated his false claim that there was no inflation during his presidency, saying, “I didn’t have any inflation and I had massive tariffs on a lot of things.” In fact, prices rose about 8% from the beginning of Trump’s presidency to the end.

Migrants, prisoners and “the Congo”: Trump repeated his false claim that foreign leaders are “releasing prisoners from jails all over the world” to let criminals come to the US as migrants, specifically saying “the Congo” is “a very big sender of people.”

Experts say there is no evidence for these claims, which Trump’s own presidential campaign was unable to corroborate, and both the Democratic Republic of Congo and the neighboring Republic of Congo have told CNN that it is false.

The border wall: Trump repeated his false claim that he built “571 miles” of a wall on the southern border. That’s an exaggeration; official government data shows 458 miles were built under Trump – including both wall built where no barriers had existed before and wall built to replace previous barriers.

Trump’s wall promises: After making the false claim about having built “571 miles,” Trump added an additional false claim that he “built much more than I said I was going to build.” In reality, when he ran for president in 2015 and 2016, Trump regularly said the US needed 1,000 miles of wall.

The 2020 election: Trump vaguely repeated his lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him, saying that “if it were an honorable election,” the US wouldn’t be facing any of its current problems. Trump legitimately lost a free and fair election to Biden.

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