MSNBC Is Now ‘Fact-Checking’ Trump’s Auto Industry Bloodbath Comment: ‘Let’s Take Trump at His Word for a Moment’

LEMIRE: “So, Michael, let’s take Trump at his word for a moment and say he was talking about the automotive industry. Let’s say he was talking about economics. But isn’t what he proposes, the tariffs and the like, wouldn’t that be devastating too?”
TOMASKY: “Of course it would, Jonathan. That’s part of what I went into in the column that I wrote about this week. Okay, take him at his word. What’s an economic bloodbath? An economic bloodbath comes from a 100% tariff on Chinese imports, to which we know China is only going to retaliate and it’s going to hurt American consumers terribly and it’s gonna hurt American workers. I cited in my piece a study from the U.S./China Business Council, you know, that well-known outpost of Marxist vermin, and they did a study in 2021 that said Trump’s tariff policy toward China have cost the United States 250,000 jobs. I also point out in my piece that if you compare auto industry employment, auto and parts manufacturing in the Trump Administration versus the Biden Administration, and even if you take the pandemic out of it and cut Trump that huge break of removing the pandemic, the Biden Administration, about 125,000 jobs have been created, 127,000 in those categories. In the Trump Administration, about 28,000. So even putting aside the malign interpretation, which I don’t believe we ought to put aside, he’s just really wrong.”
BRZEZINSKI: “All right, let’s bring in NBC News correspondent Vaughn Hillyard live from Phoenix. Vaughn, you’ve been taking a look at Trump’s record and things he’s been saying with the auto industry. What does it show?”
HILLYARD: “Right. I mean, when Trump talks about his own record over the course of the four years, he makes claims that he saved the auto industry and compared to the Biden Administration, there is no comparison. But when you actually look at what the reality is, the number of U.S. auto worker jobs in the United States actually remained pretty even over the course of those four years, from 2017 to 2020, about 45,000 jobs were added, according to the Bureau of Labor Scientifics, which when you look at the reality, plants did close in places like Lawrencetown, Ohio, and Michigan and Maryland. There were other plants that opened up in places like Alabama, as well. You did see a shift of plants going to more non-union-friendly states like Alabama. And when you hear Donald Trump talk about EV production, the Biden Administration has sought to compete with China by offering financial incentives to electric vehicle battery production. There’s a new plant that is currently in the works for about $2.5 billion EV battery production plant in Michigan that is currently under construction outside of Detroit. The Biden Administration, including Janet Yellen, just this last week acknowledged they’ve got to compete with China’s artificially low EV production here. And that is where you’ve seen the Biden Administration try to hone in and increase the movement towards there, while also acknowledging that union workers in the United States deserve a decent pay. That’s why you saw Joe Biden on the picket line with the UAW workers. Compare that, when we were out there in Michigan, with Donald Trump, who was at a non-union plant and said — you know, essentially just preferred to paint the auto industry as in under dire circumstances under Joe Biden when that, frankly, wasn’t the reality. But of course, it’s not just the auto industry in which we’ve seen Donald Trump try to paint the caricature of the reality as it exists right now, guys.”