President Donald Trump is delivering his third State of the Union address Tuesday, a speech largely focused on promoting economic and trade accomplishments.
NBC News is fact-checking his address in real time.
Claim 1
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“Thanks to our bold regulatory reduction campaign, the United States has become the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world, by far,” Trump said, according to an excerpt of the speech released in advance.
The facts: Trump is taking undue credit here. The U.S. has been the largest natural gas and oil producer since 2011 and 2014, respectively, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the agency that tracks this information. Trump took office in 2017.
Claim 2
“After losing 60,000 factories under the previous two administrations, America has now gained 12,000 new factories under my administration,” Trump said, according to the remarks prepared for delivery.
The facts: Trump is mostly right, though his numbers are slightly off. The U.S. lost 53,659 factories during the two previous administrations, not 60,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But he’s correct in saying that trend has reversed under his own administration. Between 2017 and the second quarter of last year, the U.S. added 12,074 factories, according to the most recently available data from the BLS.
Claim 3
“Since my election we have created 7 million new jobs, 5 million more than government experts projected during the previous administration,” Trump said Tuesday night.
The facts: This number is misleading. Trump is taking credit for months of job gains that occurred under former President Barack Obama’s administration, after Trump was elected. The economy, however, doesn’t move that quickly. Since Trump took office, the country has added 6.7 million job in 36 months. He also suggests that this is unprecedented success no one could have predicted, but it’s not: In the 36 months before Trump took office, Obama created 8.2 million jobs, for comparison.
