President Donald Trump delivered his first State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday, in which he boasted of the strength of the U.S. economy, the reach of the tax cuts passed by Congress and signed into law by Trump in December, and laid out his plans on immigration.
Here is how some of the president’s claims on those topics stand up to the facts.
Can immigrants bring in ‘unlimited’ and ‘distant’ relatives?
“Under the current broken system, a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives. Under our plan, we focus on the immediate family by limiting sponsorships to spouses and minor children. This vital reform is necessary, not just for our economy, but for our security, and our future,” Trump said.
This is false. Legal immigrants can sponsor their spouses, children, parents, and siblings — but distant relatives, like cousins, cannot be sponsored for residency. The family reunification visa process takes years or even more than a decade, preventing “chains” from forming the way Trump suggests, as Politico reported in detail.
What’s more, there are only so many family visas that can be granted. The numbers are capped by the U.S. government.
Trump claims credit for 2.4 million new jobs, rising wages
“Since the election, we have created 2.4 million new jobs, including 200,000 new jobs in manufacturing alone. After years of wage stagnation, we are finally seeing rising wages.”
This is half true. The job numbers are technically correct, but Trump is overstating wage growth and taking credit for jobs added under his predecessor.
Trump’s first year in office was marked by 2.1 million jobs being added to the economy — the slowest year of job growth in six years — while the other job gains came under President Barack Obama. Wages are indeed rising, but they were not exactly stagnate. They’ve been rising steadily for years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Have 3 million workers received bonuses?
“Since we passed tax cuts, roughly 3 million workers have already gotten tax cut bonuses — many of them thousands of dollars per worker,” Trump said.
This appears to be true. Americans for Tax Reform, an advocacy group that fights all tax hikes, posted a list on Tuesday of 286 companies giving bonuses or pay raises because of the tax reform bill.
“At least 3 million Americans are receiving special tax reform bonuses,” the group writes — likely where Trump is getting his figure.
While NBC News has not independently verified the group’s count, the figure tracks with USA Today’s reporting that more than 2.5 million workers have received bonuses thus far.
Trump overstates tax relief for middle class
“Our massive tax cuts provide tremendous relief for the middle class and small businesses,” Trump said.
This claim is misleading — or, at least, depends on your definition of “tremendous.” The middle class does get a tax cut under the new law, but unlike the relief for corporations, those cuts are not permanent. Ultimately, taxes for middle income families will rise.
“The tax cuts that Trump is bragging about? Those are the provisions that are slated to go away,” said Kyle Pomerleau, the director of federal projects at The Tax Foundation, an independent tax policy think tank. Most of the tax cuts affecting individuals expire in 2026. By 2027, 47.5 percent of all households will pay more in taxes than under the previous law, including 62.2 percent of taxpayers in the middle 20 percent of earners.
“The current law is an across the board tax cut,” Pomerleau said, but, “the expiration of that is going to be an across the board tax increase.”
Trump touts GOP tax cuts as ‘biggest’ in U.S. history
“Just as I promised the American people from this podium 11 months ago, we enacted the biggest tax cuts and reform in American history,” Trump said.
This claim is false. The GOP tax bill, passed in December, does not amount to the “biggest” in U.S. history, according to the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. According to their estimates, Trump’s tax cut is the eighth biggest in history.
As for the reform aspect: “It’s hard to mathematically measure how reform-y your tax plan is,” said Kyle Pomerleau, the director of federal projects at The Tax Foundation, an independent tax policy think tank. Still, Ronald Reagan’s 1986 reform simplified the tax code in a big way and was probably more “reformish,” Pomerleau told NBC News.