
President Donald Trump regularly crows about the fact that his trade war is harming the Chinese economy -- but as CNN fact checker Daniel Dale documents, the president has increasingly exaggerated the damage he's doing to China through his tariffs on their products.
While tracking Trump's claims about the Chinese economy, Dale observes that the president accurately claimed on this past July 30th that China has been experiencing its worst economic growth in 27 years.
Since then, however, Trump has progressively increased the number of years since China has suffered through such slow growth. On August 9th, the president said China was having its worst growth in 35 years, then upped the number all the way up to 54 years on August 20th.
Then, on August 30th, the president claimed that China was "having the worst year they've had, I understand, in 61 years."
Update: Trump said Friday, "They are having the worst year they've had, I understand, in 61 years." https://t.co/lUSxlyGxaX— Daniel Dale (@Daniel Dale) 1567436933.0
In addition to his fact checks of Trump's claims of China's economic growth, Dale also demonstrated how the president keeps falsely claiming that he has never heard of a Category 5 hurricane before, despite the fact that he has in the past made multiple references to Category 5 hurricanes.
President Donald Trump on the existence of Category 5 hurricanes, 2017-2019. https://t.co/IRRny20hfp— Daniel Dale (@Daniel Dale) 1567362494.0