Fact Check: All the key points made by Donald Trump in his Congress speech outlining what has already been achieved during his presidency and his vision for…

Fact Check: All the key points made by Donald Trump in his Congress speech
outlining what has already been achieved during his presidency and his vision for…

On Tuesday night, US President Donald Trump delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress, outlining what has already been achieved during his presidency and his vision for coming years. He vowed to continue delivering change, saving the nation from what he described as destruction left by his predecessor, Joe Biden.

“It has been nothing but swift and unrelenting action,” Trump said of his first weeks in office. “The people elected me to do the job, and I am doing it.”

The speech, which was the longest presidential speech to Congress in modern history, clocking in at 99 minutes, included a number of false and misleading claims, relating to climate, immigration, world trade and more.

‘The worst inflation in 48 years’
Trump said that, under the Biden administration, America experienced the “worst inflation in 48 years, but perhaps even in the history of our country”. The year-over-year US inflation rate did hit a 40-year high in June 2022, at 9.1 per cent, but “48 years” is incorrect.

The US president said he was “fighting every day to reverse this damage and make America affordable again.” However, economists fear that some of Trump’s policies, such as tariffs on the nation’s biggest trading partners and his plans to deport millions of immigrants, could have the reverse effect on the economy.

‘We will take in trillions and trillions of dollars and create jobs like we have never seen before’
The president claimed that the US “will take in trillions and trillions of dollars”, referring to his plan to impose tariffs on foreign products to raise revenue for the government.

But total US imports amounted to about $3.3 trillion (£2.6tn) last year, so it is unclear where the “trillions and trillions of dollars” could be achieved. Since tariffs are applied as a percentage of the value of imports, even a high tariff rate would not realistically yield “trillions and trillions” in revenue. This raises questions about the accuracy or feasibility of the claim.

High tariffs could also discourage Americans from purchasing imports, further reducing potential revenue.

Research also indicates the tariffs Trump imposed in his first term did not create jobs, as intended. Instead, retaliatory tariffs from other countries negatively impacted US industries, such as agriculture, leading to job losses.

‘We found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud’
President Trump claimed that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, has “found hundreds of billions of dollars” in fraud in the federal government.

But even DOGE does not purport that the figure is this high. On March 4, the day of Trump’s speech, the agency claimed on its website that it had saved an estimated $105bn (£82bn) for taxpayers.

However, news outlets have flagged that even this figure is not verified and that DOGE regularly makes errors in its reporting. For example, it once claimed that it had saved $8bn (£6bn) by cancelling a contract that was in fact worth a maximum of $8m (£6m).

‘Small-business optimism saw its single largest one-month gain ever recorded’
Trump said small business optimism saw a 41-point jump, “the single largest one-month gain ever recorded”. This claim is exaggerated. In its November survey, the National Federation of Independent Business Research Center said small-business optimism rose by eight points – not 41 points – between pre-election October and post-election November.

The “41-point” figure likely refers to a specific component of the index – such as the percentage of small-business owners expecting the economy to improve – which did see a net 41 percentage-point increase during that period. However, this is not the same as the overall index, making the claim exaggerated.

‘We ended all of Biden’s environmental restrictions that were making our country far less safe and totally unaffordable’
Trump has issued executive orders to roll back climate regulations implemented under the Biden administration, but nothing has actually been terminated yet.

The US president also said he “ended the last administration’s insane electric vehicle mandate”. There was no formal mandate under Biden’s administration. Instead, there were regulations and incentives aimed at increasing electric vehicle adoption, such as stricter emissions standards and support for clean vehicle technologies. These regulations remain largely intact, despite Trump’s claims.

‘Illegal border crossings last month were by far the lowest ever recorded’
Around 8,500 people were arrested illegally crossing the US-Mexico border in February, and Trump is correct to a degree, as this is lowest number since at least 2000, when the agency started sharing monthly data. However, official federal data shows there were actually fewer Border Patrol encounters at the south-west border during the early 1960s.

Meanwhile, Trump falsely claimed that 21 million undocumented immigrants entered the US during Biden’s tenure is unsupported by the evidence. Under Biden, 11 million “encounters” with migrants were recorded. However, “encounters” refer to interactions between migrants and border officials, and the same individual can be counted multiple times if they attempt to cross repeatedly.

As for unrecorded details, there is no concrete evidence to suggest a significant number of undocumented immigrants went unrecorded during Biden’s presidency. While it’s possible that some individuals may have crossed without detection, the claim of an additional 10 million undocumented immigrants lacks substantiation.

Trump also repeated an unsubstantiated claim that other countries have released people from their “mental institutions and insane asylums” into the US as migrants.