Trump's Economic Claims Fact-Checked — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:01] CNBC. I'm going to break down everything that Donald Trump said and then I'm going to compare it to facts and data so we can really understand where are we with our economy today. Is there potentially a reason our latest Atlanta

[00:15] Fed real GDP estimates have actually been falling down to now just 1.2% when previously they were as high as 4%. what's changing in the economy and what are some of the things that Donald Trump says that are true and where are the

[00:30] things he's saying that are quite stretched in my opinion these comments are actually critical to know because as a long-term investor you want to know what might be coming down the pike I'll give you a quick example Donald Trump

[00:44] suggested that Elon Musk and SpaceX would be open to donating some SpaceX shares to Trump accounts much like Micron has done with $250 million of

[00:56] share donations. Mind you, those share donations were announced when the stock was about 15% higher, and that stock's already down about 15%. So, they might have tried to take that off the top, so to speak. But anyway, let's get into

[01:09] what Donald Trump said. I do think it's useful to pay attention to some of this. Let's get into it. First, Donald Trump says more factories are being built than says more factories are being built than ever before. And it's really important

[01:21] to know the details of this because frankly construction spending has actually been doing the opposite. Even though we have a massive buildout of or via artificial intelligence, construction spending in the United

[01:34] States has actually fallen dramatically really since about the middle of 2024. Now, that was still at the latter part of Joe Biden's term. So, we're not trying to pick a president here, but manufacturing did get a really strong

[01:48] boost out of this low hole over here in part because of the inflation reduction act and the chips act. Now, remember the inflation reduction act was built around bringing manufacturing like manufacturing endphase inverters in

[02:01] America and that was the point that the inflation reduction act would ironically be inflationary at first as there's a buildout phase and deflationary towards the end of the decade. Most people have forgotten about the inflation reduction

[02:15] act or really even the chips act because yes both of them drive building in the United States that's inflationary but when that buildout completes for both of these whether it's TSMC Arizona which Trump brags about uh we'll talk about

[02:30] that in just a moment the Intel plant manufacturing the Micron plant manufacturing we're seeing in America a lot of these complete middle of 27 end of 27 28 and 29 that's when we see a lot more supply coming online. And so even

[02:45] though we see the inflationary early effects of that construction boom and we're still seeing that sticky inflation today, as a long-term investor, I look and I see, okay, Trump says more factories are being built. What do I

[02:59] take with that? I go look at the data. The data tells me ah more factories had been built mostly in my opinion because of the inflation reduction act and the obviously slam both of them although he's kind of secretly directing money

[03:14] with the chips act to his favorites. Uh this construction spending coming down in my opinion is a sign that all right that buildout is getting closer to completion and that disinflation is coming. So I take that one line from

[03:28] Trump and I look that's right. This is exactly why that disinflationary thesis is coming. Now that's just one part part of that obviously my opinion that we're going to see that larger disinflation though a lot of it is also based on uh

[03:42] CBO research. CBO the Congressional Budget Office put together research that going to be inflationary at the beginning of the first 5 years and disinflationary in the last 5 years. We're just barely about to enter the

[03:54] second 5 years, which to me is actually exciting and it's bullish that rates come down over time. Now, Donald Trump says uh that we've created a lot of manufacturing jobs as well. This is not exactly true. We're down about a 100,000

[04:09] manufacturing jobs since Donald Trump took office. The bigger part that I Trump says, quote, "More people are working than we've ever had before." first two lines of the interview. It

[04:22] takes so long to break down all these freaking claims. But anyway, this is not true. When we look at the labor force participation rate, if we just look at like the total population we have, yeah, guess what? US population is growing.

[04:35] Okay, so of course more people are working than ever before. But that's why we look at ratios, what ratio of people working. Uh what is the ratio of people working today compared to the past? And if we actually look at the labor force

[04:48] participation rate, which just today fell again another 30 bips, what did we fell again another 30 bips, what did we end up getting? Well, absent co to co was pretty crazy. People stopped participating in the labor market. Duh.

[05:02] Absent COVID, we are actually at the lowest level of labor force lowest level of labor force participation since about 1976 when our economy was undergoing stagflation.

[05:14] That's crazy. And in my opinion, not actually something to brag about. Fewer people are participating and taking part of the gains of this economy than ever before. Maybe that's partly why the civilian labor force was actually

[05:28] considered to have been reduced by 720,000 jobs just over the last month. Now, those numbers are volatile, so I generally don't like to hang my head or, you know, hang my hat on just the Bureau of BS statistics, I like to call it. Uh

[05:44] I like to hang my hat on stuff like this which is the longer term trend that we could see over decades and we could see that labor force participation actually started rising right before co if you remember that's actually back when I was

[05:57] covering Jerome Powell and I remember covering Jerome Powell saying folks we are finally seeing participation amongst lower income individuals and other aspects of the economy of people who don't usually participate are finally

[06:11] getting to participate in the economy. They were bragging about that back then. Co came and ruined it. But unfortunately, Donald Trump's policies have not made it easier. Is it possible that some of this decline is because of

[06:25] Absolutely. So, I don't want to like I'm not here to bag on a politician. I'm long-term investor and say, "Look, man, where's the freaking money and where's is fewer people participating in this economy, which means fewer people are

[06:40] going to be able to buy homes, which means fewer people contributing to buy goods and services, which means less or lower contribution to GDP. It's not great. Now, Donald Trump brags and says, "Oh, well, you know, people's 401ks are

[06:54] up 80 to 90%." But that's really only true if they're all in semiconductors or like Micron stock. The S&P 500 is up about 24% since his inauguration. like about 24% since his inauguration. like 19% of that came only after the quote

[07:09] unquote ceasefire which Donald Trump says we won everything on which we'll also talk about in just a moment. So, you know, look, yes, the economy is doing well on the backs of some of this ludicrous artificial intelligence

[07:21] spending that we've seen and that's great, but if that turns we're starting to get some red flags, especially, you know, some additional commentary we saw today. Talk about that later.

[07:34] Well, there's not much left holding us up, which which isn't great. Now, Donald this. Uh, not so much that they're bad people, but Donald Trump says bad people want to bring rates up to ruin the economy. I totally agree that if rates

[07:47] I don't think that's bad people trying to do that. I think that's the bond market going, "Bro, you created another inflation shock. We are going to punish uh yields and imply that the Federal Reserve should raise rates." Uh I mean

[08:02] yields are up again today even though we missed on the employment data and part of it is because there has been so much sticky inflation. So the bond market is screaming at the Fed going hike rates. It's not bad people. It's the collective

[08:14] of the bond market. People betting with their wallets saying bro this isn't good. Now in fairness it has softened a little bit. We've study now we went up from about an 18% chance of keeping rates stable to about a 23% chance of

[08:27] keeping rates stable this year. I personally think rates are not going up at all, but according to this, there is at least a 76.5% interest rate hike. I maintain and I've been saying it for the last month. I

[08:40] will keep saying it. I think that's wrong. My opinion is out there. And I think that's also the part point of this channel that people come back for is, of this? You don't have to agree with me, but I'm going to tell you my

[08:53] opinion. Yeah. Uh Donald Trump was bluntly asked, "What would you say to people saying that you're just trying to enrich yourself while in office?" And I mean, frankly, there have been plenty of uh people who, and before I say this, I

[09:07] immediately going to say to this. Okay? So, I'm going to start with what people are going to say. People always start with, "Oh, well, Donald Trump's kids and the insiders who work for Donald Trump, like his adviserss, they don't know

[09:24] what's going to happen in the Oval Office. They don't go to dinner or talk to each other in person or golf together. They could never know." These together. They could never know." These are just lucky trades. Like how lucky

[09:37] that Donald Trump's advisers bought Axon stocks uh Axon stock on February 10th, just a couple weeks before a massive over $200 million taser contract was awarded to Axon. Or how about this one? On July 23rd,

[09:53] Or how about this one? On July 23rd, 2025, Trump purchased $5 million of Broadcom, uh Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia. Later the same Microsoft, and Nvidia. Later the same day, Donald Trump unveiled its AI action

[10:08] plan, a policy that benefited those exact companies. Oh, but it was the independent advisors. They could they would have had no way to know. Donald Trump reported more than 21,000 trades across his investment accounts in 2025,

[10:21] averaging 80 trades per day. While our economy was getting yonked through the trade debacle of liberation, people obviously are like, "Well, it's not Donald Trump trading. That's dishonest." Okay, people aren't saying

[10:36] Trump is trading. People are saying Trump and his team are giving the nudge nudge wink wink to the insiders who are trading on behalf of Donald Trump. And when he answers the question, he literally answered the question, "What

[10:49] to enrich yourself who say you're trying to enrich yourself?" He literally pulled a Pam Bondi on us and said, "Well, the Dow Jones just hit a record high. We've hit 80 out of 81 highs." Something like that. Now, Donald Trump did end up

[11:05] his family handles it and he just doesn't know. Apparently, he also had no idea how much money he was making in crypto, that he made billions of dollars on his cryptocoin, while the, you know, Trump token and the Melania coin have

[11:18] lost over 99% of their value. Apparently, he had no idea that his investors got screwed to the tune of 99%, but he made billions of dollars. I guess that's what he meant by being the crypto president. But he didn't answer

[11:31] with a direct answer to all of that. He said, "Crypto, said, "Crypto, we have to be on top. We have to beat China." And everything I do has a conflict of

[11:45] interest. If I buy a cupcake, it has a conflict of interest. I I can't do anything without a conflict of interest. It's a fake news. Whatever. So, the point is Donald Trump is doing what you would expect when it

[11:59] comes to the sort of like insider trading allegations. Go ahead. What do you mean the Dow is at new heights?

[12:11] argument that at the end of his term we will have 40 to 60% of uh chips, so semiconductor chips made in America. Hm. Okay. Uh so when I heard that, I

[12:23] that's probably really good for like Micron or Intel, right?" And so, of course, I wanted to as a long-term investor fact check that. So, I did investor fact check that. So, I did exactly that. I fact checked it and it's

[12:38] not correct. At least not according to the semiconductor industry association which published a report that says that the US is expected to increase its global fab so semiconductor manufacturing capacity

[12:53] for the first time in decades growing from 10% today to 14% by 2032. from 10% today to 14% by 2032. Now, US capacity in advanced logic will

[13:07] Now, US capacity in advanced logic will grow from 0% in 2022 to 28% by 2032. that's not neither of those are 40 to 60%. So, we're definitely not going to be making 40 to 60% of all chips. We'll be making 14% of all chips, maybe. And

[13:23] term in 2029, unless he's not planning on leaving office. It'd actually be by on leaving office. It'd actually be by 2032. Advanced logic. This is actually interesting. Uh DRAM memory manufacturing, advanced packaging, you

[13:36] know, the 2 nanometers, whatever. Uh probably because of TSM Arizona in part, but also what Micron is building out. So this is actually pretty decent. Uh and the US will secure one quarter of global capital expenditures between 2024 to

[13:52] capital expenditures between 2024 to 2032, an amount second only to Taiwan for building out these uh semiconductor plants. So there's, you know, as usual, it's worth adding color to what Donald Trump says. But I have to say that's

[14:06] that's a good amount of advanced packaging manufacturing that's coming to the United States. And it just reiterates, unfortunately, my deflationary thesis that dang, that's a lot of chip manufacturing coming to the

[14:18] United States. Now, Donald Trump brags about how Arizona is doing so well at manufacturing chips because of the largest company in the world, TSM. That the largest manufacturer. But anyway, yeah, TSM did announce the Arizona plant

[14:35] during Trump's first term, a 12 billion commitment, but it didn't actually happen until Biden slipped them a check for $6.6 $6 billion through the chips act and then it actually got started. Now, in fairness, under then the tariff

[14:51] threat, TSM is like, "How about we invest even more? Please don't tariff us, bro. This is already really expensive building in America. Please don't make it worse. We'll just give you more money." All right, fine. Uh so then

[15:05] obviously this that maintains my deflationary thesis but anyway then we get to talking about Intel and corporate stakes from the United States or by the United States in corporate companies. Uh it is true that Donald Trump took a 9.9%

[15:20] it is true that Donald Trump took a 9.9% stake in Intel and that was a lot or I should say a profitable move. That was good. But the irony is it wasn't the US money like Donald Trump's dollars that went into taking the stake. Ironically,

[15:35] again, what they negotiated is they said, "Hey, Biden gave you $8.9 billion in grants. How about we turn that into equity?" Honestly, kind of brilliant because not only did the US now get equity in this, which has made tens of

[15:50] So, you got to give Trump credit for that. But, I mean, Donald Trump did also intel and, you know, make permitting or whatever a lot easier. It's nice after all to have the president in your back pocket, which I think is exactly why

[16:04] OpenAI is now proposing handing Donald Trump a 5% stake in the company. You know, there's talk about them delaying going public until 2027 because they're having trouble reaching their uh, you know, what is it, their $1

[16:17] honestly, is probably just to get special favors from Donald Trump. People administration money, you get what you want. I mean, that's how Trevor Milton, the massive fraudster, uh, ended up getting his pardon along with other

[16:31] people. But anyway, the Trump administration request prompted OpenAI to delay a wide release of its latest AI model, GPT56, uh, after rival Anthropic suspended access to its Fable 5 model due to

[16:45] Lutnik. Right. Uh, Mr. Lutnik really uh, Henry Lutnick, Uh, Mr. Lutnik really uh, Henry Lutnick, Howard Lutnik, uh, Lutnik, you know, got a lot of power over here shutting these models off and OpenAI sees this as an

[17:00] opportunity to get ahead of anthropic. Hey, we'll sweeten your tie our ties just have some shares in us and that'll make you guys less likely to want to shut us off. Hey, go ahead and keep shutting off uh, Fable. Although, in

[17:13] fairness, Fable has come back. It came back yesterday. I've started using it again. I enjoy it. I think it's a great product. Actually think I'd pay more for product. Actually think I'd pay more for Fable than any other of the uh AIS. Uh

[17:25] but that's okay. You know, they they it's like a horse race, you know, now as one's in the lead and the others in the lead and the others as it's it's a horse race. Like I you know, I actually really like Gemini uh at the end of last year.

[17:37] I kind of feel like Gemini is now in like third place for certain things. Yeah, crazy. Uh but anyway, then Donald Trump gets into Iran. Oh god,

[17:54] Trump gets into Iran and his line with Iran is the US defeated Iran militarily. I think they've agreed to everything we've asked for. And I'm like, really?

[18:06] Because if I go right now and look at what Uni Credit is saying, it's actually quite the opposite. Here it is. Uni quite the opposite. Here it is. Uni Credit. Iran is likely to emerge as a

[18:20] Credit. Iran is likely to emerge as a middle power in the Middle East. Iran's main demands have all been accepted by the United States, including full sanctions relief and the right to continue nuclear enrichment enrichment

[18:33] for peaceful purposes. Iran may emerge stronger in the war, especially now that it can modernize its economy without sanctions and it clearly has control over the straight of Hormuse, especially since this was the traditional route

[18:51] ships would take. They would hug Iran to stay or they would hug Oman uh to stay away from Iran. Well, now Iran is saying, "No, no, no, no. Y'all have to saying, "No, no, no, no. Y'all have to go closer to Iran around Larak Island so

[19:06] we can strike you if you don't pay our tolls. So, you know, on top of this, Iran continues its uh production, whatever they're doing at Pickax Mountain, which has not been touched as far as I can tell by any of our military

[19:20] strikes. Uh, not only Operation Midnight Hammer, but our uh last operation. Not good. Because in my opinion, they're working their way towards a nuke. And the investment and economic freedom to potentially do exactly that. Especially

[19:35] since when you have peaceful uranium enrichment, the line gets really blurred between when does peaceful become weaponized enrichment, unless you have inspections. Donald Trump says they're going to be inspections, but we have not

[19:50] heard of any of that sort of deal yet. So, we'll see. Uh, I'm I'm just surprised Donald Trump is sort of uh bragging about Iran, but you know, even the Pentagon itself put out a piece that wasn't that great. Donald Trump says

[20:05] there's a Pentagon assessment that says 60% of the Iranian Navy and 2/3, so 60% of the Iranian Air Force is still considered operational. Not good. Uh,

[20:17] then Donald Trump goes on to say that I don't want to be a president with a to be Herbert Hoover. And it's going to be ironic if in two years we're in a depression because like you know should have seen it coming. But he says I don't

[20:30] want to be Herbert Hoover. Herbert Hoover raised interest rates and taxes and made a terrible mistake. But see if it weren't for tariffs. Interest rates would probably be lower. If it weren't for this stupid Iran war, interest rates

[20:43] would probably be lower. Both of those issues that Donald Trump created prevented the Fed from cutting rates more. references Herbert Hoover because Herbert Hoover signed the Smood Holly

[20:57] tariffs of 1930 into law. A thousand economists then predicted that Herbert Hoover would veto them, but he signed them anyway. The Holly tariffs raised average tariff levels to about 20%. Trump hit 27% at a high and they're

[21:12] of all the handshake deals and exemptions. It's a little hard to measure because there are so many handshake deals. But Donald Trump says the real problem is that Holly didn't or um Herbert Hoover removed uh the earlier

[21:28] tariffs and had he not removed the earlier tariffs then uh there wouldn't have been a depression. In other words, tariffs are a good thing and that Herbert Hoover raised taxes which he did in 1932 and that caused a depression.

[21:43] But the depression was already going on as of 1929. So, I think Donald Trump's history here is a little blurry to say the least.

[21:58] escorted ships out of Iran during the fighting. Also find this very repeatedly denied that. He does also say that Elon has a little bit of an issue killed the EV mandate and the credits for electric vehicles, which, you know,

[22:12] is true. Uh, but I don't actually think that's what upset Elon. I think Elon was upset that he was putting his name and his brand on Doge

[22:24] putting his name and his brand on Doge to slash government spending. And then Beautiful Bill, which Elon called a disgusting abomination. And he actually campaigned against the big beautiful bill, the expansion of debt. And they

[22:38] because Donald Trump's legacy was tied to that bill. Elon's like, "What am I government cuts and here you are blowing all this other money." It's kind of like, you know, the wife's trying to budget and save money in the household

[22:52] and the dude's spending, you know, 5,000 bucks on premium golf clubs and a trip to Phoenix to go play golf, right? Like, it just pisses off what would otherwise deem to be a partner balance. Donald Trump also doubles down on his

[23:07] pretty remarkable that he's still on that. uh he says he's going to perfect getting her out even though the Supreme Court basically prevented him from removing Fed governors, but Donald Trump apparently thinks there is a loophole.

[23:21] So anyway, a bottom line out of all of this is in my opinion, we're at a sensitive point in the economy. First, we have uh cash balances that are really really low. Uh total cash balances and market money market funds very very low.

[23:37] So people are very invested in this market which is bad if it goes down market which is bad if it goes down obviously. Uh and in addition to that being bad, it's also worth paying attention to how much leverage is in the

[23:50] system. And the answer for that right now is a lot. Uh you can download the Meek Kevin app and you could see some of this data in these charts, but leverage here. We're in a little bit of a precarious place, especially now that

[24:03] precarious place, especially now that we've got GDP uh now estimates declining down to just 1.2%. Part of that because of the latest surveys coming out where we're actually seeing employment in manufacturing. Look

[24:16] at this. Sharpest fall in employment since May of 2020 in US manufacturing. we're actually trying to bob up over here on manufacturing PMIs is because of

[24:29] trying to get ahead of the pricing pressures of the Iran war. and I'll keep you updated. >> Why not advertise these things that you knows about this. >> We'll we'll try a little advertising and

[24:44] >> Congratulations, man. You have done so much. People love you. People look up to >> Kevin Praath there, financial analyst and YouTuber. Meet Kevin. Always great and YouTuber. Meet Kevin. Always great to get your take.