President Trump said his first foreign trip in office was a big success, boasting on Twitter that he saved “millions of jobs.” But the claim has no basis in fact.
“Just arrived in Italy for the G7. Trip has been very successful. We made and saved the USA many billions of dollars and millions of jobs,” the president tweeted Friday morning.
Just arrived in Italy for the G7. Trip has been very successful. We made and saved the USA many billions of dollars and millions of jobs.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2017
Saving “many billions of dollars” likely refers to the arms deal Trump brokered with Saudi Arabia, which totaling close to $110 billion was one of the largest in history. There weren’t any large financial agreements announced at the NATO summit or other public deals on Trump’s trip that dealt with “billions of dollars.”
There doesn’t seem to be any public reason why the president’s actions on the trip, which took him to Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican, Belgium and Italy, would have saved “millions of jobs” either. He said in a speech in Saudi Arabia that “we signed historic agreements with the Kingdom that will invest almost $400 billion in our two countries and create many thousands of jobs in America and Saudi Arabia,” t he Washington Post reports.
This wouldn’t be the first time that Trump has erroneously taken credit for or exaggerated the number of jobs saved during his presidency. Read Coins2Day’s running fact check of his jobs claims here.