AP Fact-checks the president on economy

The Associated Press put out this report after checking President Donald Trump's public claims about the economy.    As usual, they found that what the president says is not true.   He is lying to the American people.

================

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is painting a false picture of a U.S. economy unaffected by his trade war with China and other countries.

He describes a blue-sky world in which rapidly escalating tariffs have no impact on American consumers even as a raft of businesses and economists say otherwise, chastising those who caution of potential weakness in the economy as partisans.
"Our Country, economically, is doing great - the talk of the world!" he tweeted Sunday.

He's glossing over the facts.

Some economists have put the costs to an average U.S. household from Trump's pending tariffs on imports from China at $1,000 per year or more, not taking into account the most recent tax hike the president announced Friday of up to 30% on goods. Trump also insisted that economists don't believe his trade disputes with China could spur recession, but in fact most analysts believe a downturn could start in the next two years.

The claims capped a week in which Trump repeatedly misrepresented his administration's record, also citing false progress on veterans' health care, boasting misleadingly about his judicial nominations and blaming President Barack Obama for a policy of separating migrant families that he himself started.

A look at the claims:
ECONOMY
TRUMP: "I think our tariffs are very good for us. We're taking in tens of billions of dollars. China is paying for it." — remarks Friday night to reporters before leaving for the Group of Seven summit in France. . . . 

TRUMP: "The tariffs have cost nothing, in my opinion. ...And we're not paying for the tariffs; China is paying for the tariffs, for the one-hundredth time." — remarks on Aug. 18 to reporters in Morristown, New Jersey.

THE FACTS: Americans, in fact, are paying for the tariffs. . . . As he escalates a trade war with China, Trump refuses to recognize a reality that his own chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, has acknowledged.  . . .  In a study in May, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, with Princeton and Columbia universities, estimated that tariffs from Trump's trade dispute with China were costing $831 per U.S. household on an annual basis, before tariffs were recently escalated. . . . 

A report this month by JPMorgan Chase estimated that tariffs would cost the average American household $1,000 per year  . . . Trump has since bumped up the scheduled levies even higher. . . . 

==================

And these figures do not even address the economic effects on certain professions, like farmers, who largely lost their market for soy beans because of the tariffs Trump put on this major crop for Midwestern American farmers, sold mostly to China.   And, if farmers have no market, then merchants in our farming region will suffer too when our farmers have to reduce their spending on everything from farm equipment to new shoes for their kids.

Yes, our federal government has been giving farmers some monetary assistance to offset the lost income -- but it's never enough to compensate.

Ralph