The following article by Linda Qiu was posted on the New York Times website November 15, 2017:
WASHINGTON — President Trump marked his return from a five-country tour of Asia by recounting on Wednesday its “tremendous success” and that of his other trips abroad.
Deterred only by a struggle to quench his thirst, Mr. Trump listed numerous achievements against terrorism and for United States workers in claiming that “America is back.” But some of those statements don’t hold much water. Here’s an assessment.
He spoke of dealing ISIS ‘one crushing defeat after another’ since his meeting with Arab allies.
In detailing his May trip to Saudi Arabia, Mr. Trump said he spoke about “our strategy to defeat terrorists by stripping them of financing, territory and ideological support” and urged Arab states to drive terrorists from their societies.
It is true that the Islamic State has lost significant territory, including its de facto capital in Syria, “since that time,” as Mr. Trump said. But the extremist group had begun losing territory well before Mr. Trump’s trip to Riyadh, and he has largely kept to plans laid out under President Barack Obama.
He exaggerated when he suggested that ‘billions and billions of dollars are pouring’ into NATO at his urging.
After repeatedly criticizing other countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for not paying their fair share to the military alliance, Mr. Trump has since claimed credit for changing the trend. He said on Wednesday that “NATO, believe me, is very happy with Donald Trump and what I did.”
Under NATO guidelines, member states agreed to commit a minimum of 2 percent of gross domestic product to the organization’s defense efforts, but few nations actually do so. The secretary general of the alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, said in July that five countries contributed at least 2 percent of their G.D.P. He said he expected Romania to reach the benchmark this year, and Latvia and Lithuania to next year.
While it is conceivable that Mr. Trump ushered along the process, efforts to address the disparity predated his complaints. Members that were not meeting that bar of 2 percent pledged in September 2014 — largely because of Russian actions that were continuing — to do so over the next decade.
He overstated the overall American trade deficit.
Mr. Trump said that during his Asia trip, he gave a firm warning to every country “that cheats, breaks the rules and engages in economic aggression,” which, he said, is why “we have almost an $800 billion a year trade deficit with other nations.” That figure is accurate when examining only the trade balance in goods, about $750 billion last year.
Trade in services, however, reduced the overall deficit to $505 billion. The total trade deficit has actually increased under Mr. Trump’s watch — to $405 billion during the first nine months of 2017, compared with $370 billion during the first nine months of 2016.
He noted economic growth trends that predate his presidency.
Mr. Trump ticked off several accurate economic metrics: The unemployment rate is at its lowest level in nearly 17 years, the economy grew at over 3 percent in the last two quarters, and the stock market has been soaring. What he omits, however, is that those trends began under the Obama administration.
Almost all of the decline in the unemployment rate happened under Mr. Obama’s watch. It peaked at 10 percent in 2009, dropped to 4.8 percent by the time Mr. Trump took office and continued to decline to 4.1 percent in October. Similarly, G.D.P. growth in the last two quarters — 3 percent and 3.1 percent — is certainly healthy but on par with numbers posted in the last three years.
He said Japan will make arms purchases ‘worth many billions,’ but Japan disputes that.
Mr. Trump played up Japan’s commitment to its own defense capabilities and suggested that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose name he mispronounced, had agreed to “purchases of U.S. advanced capabilities, from jet fighters to missile defense.”
It is possible that Japan agreed to the arms sale, but if Mr. Trump and Mr. Abe did strike a deal, it would be in a very preliminary stage in a process that could take years. The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency has yet to notify Congress of any intended sale, which must happen before negotiations can begin.
Japanese officials have also pushed back at the notion. In a report in The Japan Times last week, the Japanese chief cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, said that Tokyo was following its existing defense procurement plan that was approved more than three years before Mr. Trump took office.
He claimed $250 billion in deals with China, a figure that includes nonbinding agreements.
The Commerce Department’s breakdown of the $250 billion package includes several deals that are not guaranteed to proceed. For example, an $8 billion natural gas project and $83 billion in shale development projects were both agreed to in nonbinding memorandums of understanding. The breakdown also lists a $38 billion agreement for Boeing to supply China with 300 aircraft, which is in line with its 20-year forecast, and $2.2 billion in sales from General Motors to Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, a large automaker in China that has a joint venture with G.M.
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