ORLANDO—Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump delivered two speeches in Michigan on Monday, Oct. 31. He made at least 19 false claims.

We’ll continue to investigate some other claims he made about job outsourcing from the state. For now, the list:

Grand Rapids, Michigan

1. Falsely said of Hillary Clinton: “She created the vacuum, ISIS formed . . . there was no ISIS when she was secretary of state. She and Obama created it through the vacuum they created.” (ISIS has existed in some form since 1999; it was already a major entity during the Bush presidency. It named itself Islamic State of Iraq in 2006, more than two years before Clinton took office.)

2. Falsely said of Barack Obama in 2008, “He essentially was talking about how corrupt the election system is in Chicago . . . and saying, ‘I’m lucky I’m from Chicago.’” (Obama did not say anything about being lucky to be from Chicago or lucky he was from a corrupt city. He seemed to be referring to Chicago’s past, not present corruption. His quote: “I come from Chicago. So I want to be honest. It is not as if it’s just Republicans who have monkeyed around with elections in the past. Sometimes Democrats have too.”)

3. Falsely said, “Before NAFTA went into effect there were 280,000 autoworkers in Michigan. Today that number is only 160,000 and, believe me, it’s going down and going down fast.” (He repeated this claim at his second rally on Monday. Writes The Associated Press: “Michigan actually added jobs after the North American Free Trade Agreement began in 1994, when auto-manufacturing and auto-parts plants employed roughly 280,000 workers. Over the next six years, their ranks increased to 320,000. The decline only occurred after the tech bubble burst and U.S. automakers lost market share among U.S. consumers.” It is not “going down” — the Detroit Free Press reports that auto jobs have increased sharply since the crash: “Since the rescue of General Motors and Chrysler in 2008-09, auto manufacturing jobs in Michigan have grown from 22,800 to 38,200 and auto parts jobs also have grown, from 73,400 to 162,800.”)

4. Falsely said, “We have nearly $800 billion in annual trade deficits with the world.” (Repeated at his second rally. The U.S. trade deficit was $532 billion in 2015. It was $746 billion only if you exclude trade in services, at which the U.S. excels. Trump sometimes specifies that he is talking only about goods, but he did not here.)

5. Falsely said of Mexico, “They’re on a VAT system; we’re on our system. Well there’s . . . almost a 17 per cent difference. So every deal we make, we are behind 17 per cent before we even start. People have known that for years and years and years and it’s a defective deal.” (Mexico’s value-added tax does not put the US “behind” in trade. It applies both to products imported to Mexico and products made in Mexico. “He was implying that it’s a trade barrier, and it’s just not,” Alan Deardorff, economics professor at the University of Michigan, told CNN in September. “A VAT does not favor one country’s producers over another’s. Trump’s claim that Mexico’s VAT gives its producers an advantage over American competitors is simply wrong,” Tax Policy Center expert Eric Toder wrote.)

6. Falsely said of Barack Obama’s $3 billion funding commitment to the UN’s climate change program, “It’s insane — a number that Hillary wants to actually increase.” (Clinton has never said she wants an increase, her campaign confirmed Wednesday.)

7. Falsely said of a 700-mile border fence proposed in 2006, “You know why they didn’t build it? They couldn’t get their environmental impact statements.” (Environmental impact statements were not an issue here: the secretary of Homeland Security used his powers to waive the usual environmental review. “In a sweeping use of its authority, the Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday that it would bypass environmental reviews to speed construction of fencing along the Mexican border,” the New York Times reported in 2008. “It’s simply false that environmental requirements or issues impeded wall construction,” Denise Gilman, director of the immigration clinic at the University of Texas School of Law, told Politifact.)

8. Falsely described Clinton’s role in the release of illegal immigrants convicted of crimes: “And they bring these people back to their countries and thee countries very intelligently, they said, ‘No we don’t want a murderer, no we don’t want a drug dealer, no we don’t want the head of a gang in Los Angeles.’ They call up the secretary of state’s office. They say, ‘Oh that’s OK, bring them back.’ So we release them right into our country.” (This is false in several ways. These immigrants are never actually sent back to countries that refuse to take them; they are eventually released from U.S. prisons. The secretary of state’s office is not called about the releases, nor did Clinton have a choice: a 2001 Supreme Court decision requires their eventual release if they can’t be deported.)

9. Falsely said, “GM laid off 314 workers at the Lake Orion assembly plant in 2013 because of the imports from the South Korean trade deals that were pushed by Hillary. That was her baby.” (The Lake Orion plant was actually making a car, the Chevrolet Sonic, whose earlier version had previously been made in South Korea. “The Sonic used to be made in South Korea as the Aveo. Now they design it, it’s built in Lake Orion, and the president was able to point to it as an example of two countries working together,” a local news station reported in 2011, when Obama and South Korea’s president visited. GM has since laid off hundreds of workers there, but because of poor sales, not South Korea.)

Warren, Michigan

10. Falsely said, “Donna Brazile was fired from the network for giving Crooked Hillary the answers and questions to a debate.” (There are is no such thing as “answers to a debate.”)

11. Falsely said of hacked John Podesta emails, “Another one came in today where various networks, a lot of them, were sending stories . . . ‘what do you want us to say here what do you want us to say there? What should we do here? What should we do there?’ Do you believe it?” (There is no new email showing multiple television networks asking for direction from the Clinton campaign.)

12. Falsely said, “You’ve been seeing polls. We’re winning almost everywhere.” (Trump was trailing nationally and in most swing states.)

13. Falsely said, “We give Iran back $150 billion.” (The nuclear deal with Iran did not involve a $150 billion payment; rather, a smaller amount of Iranian assets were unfrozen. The Treasury Department told Congress in 2015 that total Iranian assets were estimated at $100 billion to $125 billion; it put the “usable liquid assets” at around $50 billion. Secretary of State John Kerry said Iran would get about $55 billion.)

14. Falsely said, “We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world.” (The U.S. does not even have the highest corporate taxes, though it is near the top. Where all taxes are concerned, the U.S. is below the average for OECD industrialized nations.)

15. Falsely said he was “even” in Michigan polls. (He was down by an average of 7 percentage points.)

16. Falsely described Mexico’s value added tax: “Under NAFTA, we eliminated our tariffs on Mexico but Mexico raised their VAT on us.” (Mexico did not raise its VAT “on us” — it raised its VAT in general — and the decision was unrelated to NAFTA. NAFTA came into effect on Jan. 1, 1994; Mexico raised the VAT from 10 to 15 per cent in spring 1995 as part of its response to its economic crisis. Articles at the time did not mention NAFTA.)

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17. Falsely said of the disparity in advertising spending, “In Florida it’s 50 to 1.” (There was a September article that said Clinton was “slated” to outspend him 53 to 1 in Florida, but this is not actually happening. CNN reported on Oct. 18 that Clinton had spent $43 million in Florida, Trump about $12 million, a ratio of less than 4 to 1.)

18. Falsely said Clinton “wants open borders in the Middle East . . . she wants the Middle East to pour into our country.” (Clinton is not proposing anything of the sort.)

19. Falsely said, “She is going to raise taxes. Hillary is going to raise your taxes up to almost 50 per cent, by the way.” (This is only close to true for rich people. Under Clinton’s plan, only people making more than $5 million a year would face a top marginal rate of, effectively, 44 per cent. People below the top 1 per cent will see only minor changes.)

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