CNN fact-checker says Walz’s claim on Trump economy ‘not true,’ says manufacturing jobs rose under him

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale corrected Democrat vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s claims about the Trump-era economy and made a key observation that some numbers were taken out of context.

“Let‘s talk about manufacturing,” anchor Kate Bolduan said to Dale as she spoke Tuesday on “CNN News Central.” “Building back up manufacturing in the United States is a focus of both campaigns.” 

She then played a clip of Walz from his recent appearance on ABC’s “The View” where he had claimed, “We want to make sure that you’re able to bring manufacturing, like [Democrat presidential nominee] Kamala Harris has said. We know [Republican nominee] Donald Trump lost more manufacturing jobs than any president in American history. That‘s simply factual.”

CNN’s Daniel Dale called out Gov. Tim Walz for a false statement about the Trump-era economy.

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The media network’s fact-checker warned that Walz’s claim was simply “not true.”

“Well, if you’re going to say something is simply factual, it should be factual. This is not,” he said. “It’s not true that the Trump presidency lost more manufacturing jobs than any other presidency. Under George W. Bush, there were about 4.5 million manufacturing jobs lost. Under Trump, it was about 178,000.”

He went on to add that other past presidents had far more manufacturing jobs lost during their times in office, such as Eisenhower, Ford and Reagan. “So Trump does not have the record,” Dale said.

Dale also argued that people criticizing Trump’s economy are ignoring the fact there was a historic pandemic during his presidency. 

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Donald Trump (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

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“I think it‘s also worth pointing out for context that these Trump job losses in manufacturing overwhelmingly occurred because of the COVID pandemic,” he said. “Pre-pandemic, under Trump, there was a gain of about 414,000 manufacturing jobs. Again, he ended [at] negative 178,000, but that was largely because we had a pandemic-related crash.”