Trump Repeats Debunked Wall Claims in Fox News Town Hall
During a Wisconsin Town Hall with Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren, Trump again repeated comments long debunked, and never addressing those criticisms.
On immigration, Trump says he is “totally in favor of immigration” but people have to come in legally. He says he will build a wall and Mexico will pay for it. “It’ll be so easy,”
To much applause from the Fox News audience, Trump went on to claim it would take around $10 billion to build.
Reality
As we’ve documented, the Great Wall of Trump won’t be around $10 billion but instead closer to $25 billion plus maintenance costs of $750 million per year.
The claim that he can use a trade deficit with Mexico to force them to pay for a wall should enlighten you that Donald Trump does not understand how the world works. A trade deficit, which is also referred to as net exports, is an economic condition that occurs when a country is importing more goods than it is exporting.
The deficit equals the value of goods being imported minus the value of goods being exported, and it is given in the currency of the country in question. For example, assume that the United States imports from Mexico $800 billion dollars worth of goods, while exporting to Mexico only $750 billion dollars. In this example, the trade deficit, or net exports, with Mexico would be $50 million dollars.
In our example the holder of that $50 million dollars is the private (and probably some public) companies operating in Mexico, not the Mexican government. Essentially Trump is demanding that the Mexican government to pay for a wall with money that he should know it doesn’t have ownership of.