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A TV ad from a group supportive of President Donald Trump makes misleading claims, and uses outdated data, to argue that he is “fixing” an economy “ruined” by Democrats.
For example, the ad says that “inflation and gas prices” are now “at four-year lows,” based on data from March. National average gasoline prices have increased since then and are several cents higher than when Trump took office. And economists have warned that inflation also may soon increase again because of Trump’s tariff policies.
The ad also says that “Trump’s plan” is to provide “middle-class tax cuts.” The Republican budget bill would benefit middle-income taxpayers by extending the 2017 tax cuts — on average, every income group would get some tax relief. However, a nonpartisan tax policy organization has found that the majority of the tax cut benefits would go to the wealthiest 20% of households.
According to Axios, Securing American Greatness, the nonprofit group behind the 30-second ad, paid in the “high seven figures” to run the commercial for two weeks in 20 targeted congressional districts nationwide, on cable TV and online. Axios said the ad started airing May 12.
We’ll address the ad’s questionable claims in order.
Economy
The ad begins with a narrator saying that “they’ve ruined our economy,” as photos of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Rep. Nancy Pelosi and former President Joe Biden, all Democrats, are shown on screen. “President Trump is fixing it,” the narrator later says. That claim distorts the facts.
The economy wasn’t the best it’s ever been when Trump took office again in January – but it also wasn’t in ruin.
We’ve said before that Trump inherited an economy experiencing significant annual growth, monthly job and stock market gains, plus much lower inflation than in 2022.
Even the director of the White House National Economic Council during Trump’s first term, Gary Cohn, said in a December interview on “Face the Nation” that Trump was inheriting from Biden a “very stable economy.”
Tax Cuts
While talking about “Trump’s plan” for the country, the ad’s narrator mentions “middle-class tax cuts.”
It’s true that the House-passed budget reconciliation bill would reduce taxes for middle-income households compared with what they would pay if the individual income tax cuts in a 2017 tax law are allowed to expire at the end of the year.
“Middle-income households would receive an average tax cut of about $1,800, or about 2.4 percent of their after-tax income,” according to Tax Policy Center estimates. Those households have incomes between about $66,800 and $119,200.
However, the TPC also found that “60 percent of the tax cuts would go to the top 20 percent of households and more than one-third would go to those making $460,000 or more.” The “biggest beneficiaries,” the TPC said, would be households making between $460,000 and $1.1 million, whose taxes would be reduced by an average of nearly $21,000, or 4.3% of their after-tax income.
Meanwhile, the bottom 20% of households, who make about $35,000 or less, would get a tax cut of less than 1%, or about $160 on average.
To be clear, most people won’t experience this as a new tax cut. Rather, it’s an extension of the status quo and the absence of a tax increase at year’s end.
An analysis of the budget bill by the Penn Wharton Budget Model says that the benefits disparity is even larger when factoring in the bill’s cuts to safety net programs like Medicaid and supplemental food assistance. According to PWBM, even when considering the bill’s tax relief, in the long-term “lower-income households and some in the middle class are worse off, despite positive economic effects.” Meanwhile, PWBM said, “The top 10% of the income distribution receives about 70 percent of the total value of the legislation.”
Tariffs
The narrator of the ad goes on to claim that “we’re already seeing results” from Trump’s economic plan, as text on screen says “Trump’s Tariffs … Delivered Results.” Before that, the ad lists some of the purported economic benefits from Trump’s second-term tariffs.
But the quote attributed to the New York Times isn’t about results for the economy. The March 5 story highlighted in the ad was about tariffs that Trump announced this year on imports of Mexican goods that got Mexico to produce results for the U.S. on illegal immigration and fentanyl smuggling. The quote used in the ad is a truncated version of the article’s headline and subhead.
“Trump’s Tariffs Stun Mexico,” the headline says in part, followed by the subhead: “President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government made major concessions — and delivered results — to avert President Trump’s 25 percent tariffs. He imposed them anyway.”
The Times reported that “Sheinbaum dispatched thousands of National Guard troops to the state of Sinaloa, the hub of fentanyl trafficking, where they seized vast amounts of the synthetic opioid and busted hundreds of laboratories.” Then she “sent thousands more” troops to the U.S. border, “contributing to a plunge in the number of illegal crossings,” the story said.
In addition, the Times noted, Mexico had “agreed to send more than two dozen alleged cartel heads to be tried in the United States,” reversing the Mexican government’s position on extraditions.
Prices
From there, the ad’s narrator says that “the cost of living is coming down,” adding that “inflation and gas prices [are] at four-year lows.”
The ad refers to core inflation, which is a measure of the change in the price of goods excluding food and energy items. The April 10 Forbes article cited in the ad reported that the annual rate of core inflation was 2.8% in March, the lowest since March 2021. Core CPI was also 2.8% in April, the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But the same Forbes article noted that tariffs that Trump implemented in early April, and ones that are currently on a 90-day pause, could end up increasing inflation again. It said that “Goldman forecasted the core CPI rate,” influenced by Trump’s tariffs, “would jump to 3.7% by the end of 2025, which would be a level not seen since March 2024.”
Furthermore, average prices for regular gasoline are not at a four-year low. The claim appears to be based on a March 13 Inc article – not one from April 13, as the on-screen text says. Inc reported that average retail gasoline prices in early March “slid to a multi-year low, according to GasBuddy data.” At the time, GasBuddy, which tracks fuel prices, said that the national average cost had fallen to about $3.03 per gallon, “the lowest March level since the pandemic.”
But, as of the week ending May 19, the average price of gasoline nationally was about $3.17 per gallon, according to the Energy Information Administration. That was up from about $3.11 when Trump took office, according to EIA figures.
Wages
Next, the ad’s narrator says “wages are up” while viewers see the words “hourly earnings increased,” which is a quote from the April 4 CNBC article cited in the ad.
While CNBC reported that the one-month increase in average hourly earnings for private workers was 0.3% in March, the news outlet said that the annualized growth rate of 3.8% was the lowest level since July 2024. Then average hourly earnings increased 0.2% month over month in April, and, again, the year-over-year increase was 3.8%, according to the BLS.
As of April, average hourly earnings had increased 0.6% since Trump took office again.
Jobs
Finally, the narrator says “we’re creating American jobs,” as the text “451,000 jobs” is shown.
But that figure is from an April 22 Fox Business article, which said that roughly $5.2 trillion in announced investments in U.S. business since Jan. 20 is “estimated to generate at least 451,000 new jobs for Americans.” As we’ve written, there’s no guarantee that all of those investments will happen, or that those jobs will materialize.
BLS data show that total employment increased by 464,000 between January and April. That’s lower than a 586,000 increase in employment during the same period in 2024.
But as we’ve written, job gains and losses are often tied to economic factors beyond a president’s control.
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