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Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino. President Donald Trump has cited a $40 billion trade deficit with Switzerland to justify a new, high tariff on imported Swiss goods. But his figure ignores trade in services. The overall goods-and-services deficit is less than $9 billion.  After months of warnings and negotiations, Trump signed an executive order on July 31 setting tariff rates on U.S. trading partners who didn’t “sufficiently address imbalances in our trading relationship.” Among the nations hit with the highest tariff rates is Switzerland, with a 39% rate. “The problem with Switzerland,” Trump told reporters the next day, is “we have a $40 billion deficit with Switzerland. … That’s a big deficit.” He repeated the claim in an Aug. 5 interview on CNBC, increasing the purported deficit with Switzerland to $41 billion. Recounting his phone call with Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter, Trump said he told her, “We have a $41 billion deficit with you, madam. … And you want to pay 1% tariffs. … We lose because I view deficit as loss.” Trump does not account for the U.S. surplus in trade services with Switzerland in his calculation, only the deficit in trade goods. It’s an omission he makes in other claims about trade imbalances with other countries. He also mischaracterizes a trade deficit as a loss for American consumers, experts told us. Trump’s claim of a $40 billion trade deficit with Switzerland “is not accurate,” Ryan Young, a senior economist with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an organization opposed to government over-regulation, told us in an email. Young cited data from the Office of the United States Trade Representative, which show that the U.S. goods trade deficit with Switzerland in 2024 was $38.3 billion, a 56% increase over the previous year. The U.S. services trade surplus with Switzerland was $29.7 billion in 2024, a 31% increase over 2023. Swiss-made Rolex watches. Photo by malajscy / stock.adobe.com. “This means America’s total goods and services deficit with Switzerland is about $8.6 billion,” Young said. It is also “inaccurate to say that we lose $40 billion a year with Switzerland … because people get something in return for their money,” Young said. The trade deficit with Switzerland “is in line with the broader multilateral pattern: the United States runs a goods trade deficit and a services trade surplus,” Jonathan Dingel, an associate professor of economics at Columbia University, said via email. “Running a bilateral trade deficit with Switzerland simply means that United States buyers imported more from Swiss sellers than Swiss buyers imported from US sellers. There is no sense in which a bilateral trade imbalance constitutes a win or a loss,” Dingel said. Gene M. Grossman, a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, agreed. “Trump views trade as a zero sum game where everything you buy is a loss. But of course, that’s nonsense,” Grossman said in an email. The top Swiss imports to the U.S. include pharmaceutical products, gold and other precious metals and stones, watches and clocks, optical and medical equipment, organic chemicals, precision machinery, and, to a lesser degree, Swiss chocolates. Gold, Switzerland’s top export to the U.S., is exempt from the tariffs, and pharmaceuticals, the second largest Swiss export to the U.S., are temporarily excluded, the New York Times reported. “In the short run, consumers will see higher prices for many Swiss goods. These include chocolate, dairy products, and watches,” Young said. “Medical supplies, another significant Swiss product, will be hit, which could affect some treatment costs and related co-pays and insurance premiums.” “In the medium run, Switzerland exports a lot of chemicals and manufacturing equipment to the US. This doesn’t go directly to consumers, but increased costs do reach consumers eventually,” Young also said. “Tariffs are a tax, and Americans will pay them, one way or another. Some of the cost is at the checkout aisle, and some of it is more subtle and more downstream. But people still pay.” On April 2, when Trump announced “reciprocal” tariffs for other countries, he shared a misleading chart that showed a 31% tariff to be imposed on Switzerland. As we wrote in April, USTR said that while computing trade deficit effects for every country “is complex, if not impossible, their combined effects can be proxied by computing the tariff level consistent with driving bilateral trade deficits to zero.” To arrive at the appropriate tariff rate, USTR said it divided the size of a country’s trade imbalance with the U.S. in goods by how much America imports in goods from that nation. A White House spokesperson told us Trump increased the tariff rate on Switzerland to 39% because “that was the rate that the President decided based on consultations with his trade and economic team that considered, among other factors, Switzerland’s relative trade deficit, seriousness in trade negotiations, and the fact that Switzerland is one of the world’s wealthiest, highest income countries.” In response to Trump’s announcement of a 39% tariff, the Swiss government said in an Aug. 4 press release, “Switzerland’s trade surplus to March 2025 is not the result of any ‘unfair trade practices’. In fact, Switzerland unilaterally scrapped all tariffs on industrial goods as of 1 January 2024, meaning over 99% of US goods enter Switzerland tariff-free.” The Swiss government also said it was planning to continue negotiations on a trade deal with the U.S. and “present a more attractive offer” before the tariff was scheduled to take effect on Aug. 7. Distorting Trade Balances With Other Countries Switzerland is not the only example where Trump misrepresented the overall trade deficit with another nation. At a Jan. 7 press event at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said, “European Union, we have a trade deficit of $350 billion.” But in 2024, the U.S. exported $666.7 billion in goods and services to the EU, while it imported more than $815.1 billion, resulting in a trade deficit of about $148.4 billion, as we’ve written. In negotiating an agreement with the EU in July that imposed a 15% tariff

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino. Hours after the Bureau of Labor Statistics released employment data showing slow job growth for July and prior months, President Donald Trump fired the BLS commissioner, claiming the job numbers were “phony” and that the commissioner had “faked” other job figures to help Democrats. There’s no evidence the commissioner, or others at BLS, manipulated the data, and Trump hasn’t provided any. The Frances Perkins Department of Labor building on Aug. 4. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images. The president’s timeline on past BLS announcements supposedly attempting to aid Democrats in the 2024 election is also incorrect. Trump’s claims echo his past baseless assertions that the Biden administration had manipulated data on jobs. Last August, he claimed an annual revision of BLS figures was a “total lie.” Kathy Utgoff, a former BLS commissioner who was appointed by President George W. Bush, told us in a phone interview that commissioners “can’t rig the numbers. … The commissioner has no ability to change the numbers that come out of computers at the last minute.” BLS staffers “hand the commissioner the press release with the numbers in it” 36 hours before the jobs report is announced. Utgoff told us that the only thing the commissioner could do is adjust the wording in the press release, and the goal is to “try to be boring” with that language. William Beach, another former BLS commissioner, who was appointed by Trump in 2019, described the process the same way in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “By the time the commissioner sees the numbers, they’re all prepared. They’re locked into the computer system,” he said in the Aug. 3 interview. BLS produces statistical data on employment, wages, inflation and more, and its work has long been viewed as nonpartisan. “The rank and file of the BLS and the other statistical agencies are deeply imbued with the importance of independence,” David Wilcox, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and director of U.S. economic research at Bloomberg Economics, told us in an email. “They understand to their core the importance of delivering the best possible estimates, even if and when the message is inconvenient for the president and his team.” BLS’ press releases are dry. The Aug. 1 press release, issued at 8:30 a.m., stated: “Total nonfarm payroll employment changed little in July (+73,000) and has shown little change since April, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported today. The unemployment rate, at 4.2 percent, also changed little in July.” At the bottom of the release, BLS noted sizable revisions for the prior two months. “Revisions for May and June were larger than normal. The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for May was revised down by 125,000, from +144,000 to +19,000, and the change for June was revised down by 133,000, from +147,000 to +14,000. With these revisions, employment in May and June combined is 258,000 lower than previously reported. (Monthly revisions result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors.)” The employment data now show the economy has added 486,000 jobs during Trump’s second term, a growth rate of 0.3%. Over the same time period last year, the U.S. added 954,000 jobs, or 0.6%. The monthly job estimates typically are released the first Friday of each month, based on what’s called the “establishment survey,” a survey of about 121,000 employers that covers about 30% of U.S. employment. After the BLS report was released, Stephen Miran, chair of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, gave a few reasons for the employment data. He told reporters that “about 60% of the overall revisions were due to quirks of the seasonal adjustment process, changes to seasonal adjustments,” saying that teachers, for example, factor into those seasonal calculations. Miran also said there was uncertainty about tariffs and the Republican tax bill that could have caused some firms to “hold off” on investments. “That’s totally reasonable and absolutely something that you would expect,” he said, adding that the “uncertainty is resolved” so “we expect things to get materially stronger.” But after Miran’s comments, in a 2:09 p.m. Truth Social post, Trump announced that BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer would be fired immediately. The president claimed McEntarfer “faked the Jobs Numbers before the Election to try and boost Kamala’s chances of Victory,” and he questioned the most recent job figures. He pointed out that McEntarfer was appointed by Biden. McEntarfer, an economist who worked in the federal government for more than 20 years, was confirmed for a four-year term on Jan. 11, 2024, by an 86-8 bipartisan Senate vote. Among those who voted to approve her were now Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. In remarks to reporters on Aug. 1, Trump said he fired McEntarfer because “I think her numbers were wrong,” calling the BLS job statistics released that day “phony.” In a subsequent Truth Social post, Trump claimed that the latest jobs report and pre-election figures were all “Rigged.” The administration hasn’t produced any evidence for Trump’s claims. The White House has pointed to revisions that BLS has made to job numbers under McEntarfer’s leadership. But that’s not evidence of any manipulation. “Revisions are not mistakes, they are improvements,” Utgoff said. The BLS routinely revises its figures as more information is gathered, the agency explains on its website. The monthly job estimates are revised twice as more payroll data are collected, and then a full year’s worth of figures are updated in what BLS calls its annual “benchmarking” process. While noting that the revisions to May and June job figures were “big,” Beach, on CNN, said that “every time we publish on Friday, there are revisions to the previous two months. This is a survey. And a survey has sample returns.” Similarly, Wilcox told us that the revisions “are indeed larger than normal. The fact that that

Former President Bill Clinton flew multiple times on airplanes belonging to the late Jeffrey Epstein. But there is no evidence that Clinton visited the convicted sex offender’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands “28 times,” as President Donald Trump has claimed. In a 2019 statement posted on social media, a spokesman for Clinton acknowledged that he traveled on Epstein’s planes during several international trips in 2002 and 2003, when he was no longer president. However, the statement said that Clinton never went to the Caribbean island that was Epstein’s primary residence. But in recent interviews, Trump – who has been under public pressure to release files related to Epstein’s crimes – invoked Clinton’s connection to Epstein as Trump responded to questions from reporters about his own past friendship with the disgraced financier who was arrested on charges of sex trafficking of minors in July 2019 and died in prison a month later. The Justice Department concluded Epstein committed suicide. The federal indictment alleged that Epstein “sexually exploited and abused dozens of underage girls by enticing them to engage in sex acts with him in exchange for money,” between 2002 and 2005, the Justice Department said at the time. Epstein’s island was alleged to have acted as a hub for the sex trafficking of young women and underaged girls. “And by the way, I never went to the island, and Bill Clinton went there, supposedly, 28 times,” Trump said when answering questions about Epstein while in Scotland on July 28.  Days earlier, during a July 25 press gaggle outside the White House, Trump made the same claim about Clinton when a reporter asked Trump if he was considering pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in prison for sex trafficking conspiracy charges and transporting minors to engage in sex acts with Epstein. Maxwell was recently interviewed by Justice Department officials, and she has offered to testify about Epstein before Congress in exchange for an immunity deal or clemency from the president.  “Well, I don’t want to talk about that,” Trump said to the reporter who asked. “You ought to be speaking about Bill Clinton, who went to the island 28 times. I never went to the island.” We asked the White House for the source of Trump’s recent claim about Clinton, but we have not received an answer. Trump may be incorrectly referring to the number of times that Clinton traveled on Epstein’s planes. In August 2019, Trump’s claim was that Clinton “was on his plane 27 times” — not that he had been to the island that often. As we wrote in an article at that time, Clinton was on an Epstein plane 26 times during six trips between Feb. 9, 2002, and Nov. 4, 2003. That’s according to flight logs that were unsealed as part of a lawsuit brought by one of Epstein’s accusers. There were 26 flights because some of the six trips included multiple stops. Clinton traveled to places such as London, Hong Kong, Oslo, Beijing and several African countries. But in that same article, we said: “There is no evidence that Clinton visited Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean. None of the flight logs list Clinton as a passenger on a Virgin Islands-bound plane.” Business Insider later reported in July 2020 that Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s victims, who died by suicide this year, wrote in an unpublished memoir, which was unsealed as part of a lawsuit against Maxwell, that she saw Clinton on the island. Also, one of Clinton’s former aides, Doug Band, told Vanity Fair for a December 2020 story that Clinton once visited the island in January 2003. But in a July 2019 statement, Clinton’s office, while acknowledging his multiple trips on Epstein’s planes, said that Clinton “has never been to Little St. James Island.” The statement said that Clinton “knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York.” We’d note that Trump also was a guest on Epstein’s planes, taking at least seven flights with him during the 1990s, according to flight logs released during Maxwell’s trial. But as with Clinton, those logs do not indicate that Trump ever flew to Epstein’s private island. Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102.  The post Trump Offers No Evidence for Claim About Bill Clinton and Epstein Island appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino. About six months into the second term of President Donald Trump, Republicans and Democrats are making conflicting and often misleading assessments of the Trump administration’s impact on inflation and prices. Both sides cherry-pick examples of consumer products to support their claims, while sometimes wrongly taking credit for lower prices or falsely casting blame for rising costs. Experts say the reasons for the rise or fall of prices usually involve a number of factors beyond the policies implemented in the first six months of the current administration, and predictions of success or failure of those policies, including tariffs, are still to be determined. “The economy is roaring, business confidence is soaring, incomes are up, prices are down and inflation is dead, it’s dead,” Trump proclaimed at the White House Faith Office luncheon on July 14. At a news briefing the same day, Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries offered a different portrait of the American economy. “Costs aren’t going down in the United States of America, costs are going up,” he said. “America is too expensive. And things aren’t getting better under Donald Trump and House Republican rule, they’re getting worse.” Inflation, a major theme of the 2024 election, had increased substantially during the first half of President Joe Biden’s term, due largely to the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. For the 12-month period ending in June 2022, the Consumer Price Index increased 9.1% – “the largest 12-month change since the period ending November 1981,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics said. The annual CPI moderated to below 3% for the six months before Trump returned to the White House, as we’ve written. It was 3% for the 12 months ending in January. Contrary to Trump’s claim, not all prices are “down” and inflation isn’t “dead.” Based on the CPI, the inflation rate was 2.7% for the 12 months ending in June, and was up 0.8% from January to June. Core inflation, which doesn’t include the categories of food and energy, rose 2.9% from June 2024. In January, annual core inflation was 3.3%. Not all costs are “going up,” either, as Jeffries suggested. We reached out to the White House for information to support Trump’s statements, but we did not receive a response. We also asked Jeffries’ office for support for his statements, and his office said it would “let the Leader’s comments on the record speak for themselves.” Jeffries’ office also noted the rise in the CPI in June and increases in prices for groceries, beef and other specific items. In this story we’ll examine recent changes in the prices of some of the products Republican and Democratic leaders cite as bellwethers of the economic climate. Groceries At a campaign event on Aug. 15, 2024, at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump spotlighted the high cost of food under the Biden administration. Surrounded by staged displays of groceries, Trump said, “When I win, I will immediately bring prices down.” Then, in an interview in the Dec. 30 issue of Time magazine, Trump backpedaled on his pledge regarding grocery prices. “It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up,” he said. “You know, it’s very hard.” Yet, during a White House lunch with the presidents of West African nations on July 9, Trump responded to a reporter’s question about the impact of his economic policies, saying, “I brought down the cost of groceries. I brought down the cost of energy, tremendously energy, tremendously groceries.” Also on July 9, in an interview on MSNBC, Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin said Trump “ran on lowering costs for people. That was the issue last year. And now every action he’s taking appears to be raising costs for families, whether that’s food at the grocery store.” Baldwin added later, “we need to make sure that … the public is crystal clear about why their grocery bill isn’t going down, but is in fact going up.” The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI for “food-at-home” — products bought at a grocery store or supermarket — increased from January to June by 0.6%, and was up 2.4% from June 2024. The USDA’s Economic Research Service in July estimated that for 2025, “Food-at-home prices are predicted to increase 2.2 percent,” the midpoint of an estimated range of 1.1% to 3.4%. “Grocery prices have been accelerating,” Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the nonpartisan Budget Lab at Yale University, told us via email. “Grocery prices overall are literally up over the last five months.” “On the other hand, a little bit of grocery inflation is typical, and it’s not clear that the president has much to do with recent grocery price dynamics,” Tedeschi said, noting the impact of climate and disease on the prices of beef and eggs in recent years. “On the third hand, while presidents have very few levers to actually affect prices, one they do have is tariffs, and tariffs have gone up considerably this year, from a 2.4% average effective tariff rate in January,” Tedeschi said, to an average effective tariff rate of 20.6% as of July 14, according to the Budget Lab. Due to Trump’s tariffs, “Over the next year or two, we think food prices will rise 3.7% more than otherwise, and stay 3.2% higher over the longer-run (5-10 years),” he said. Eggs At the summit with West African leaders on July 9, Trump said his administration had brought down the price of eggs since January. “If you remember my first week in office, the press was screaming at me about the cost of eggs. They were four times higher than they were just a short time ago. That was caused by Biden and stupid policies, and we got that down. And by Easter, it was normalized and now it’s actually even at a lower price,” the president said. The nationwide average price for a dozen grade A white eggs paid by consumers declined from $4.95 in January to $3.78 in June, a 23.8% decrease,

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino. The United States and the European Union have reached a preliminary trade deal to avoid a 30% U.S. tariff on imported goods from the EU that President Donald Trump threatened would go into effect on Aug. 1. Trump had argued that higher tariffs were needed because EU tariffs and nontariff policies “cause the large and unsustainable trade deficits” between the U.S. and the EU, but economists disputed that statement. EU tariffs were already generally low, economists told us, and other economic factors – rather than specific trade policies or regulations – contribute more to the yearslong U.S.-EU trade imbalance. Under the new agreement, the U.S. will impose a 15% tariff on most imports from the 27 EU nations, Trump said on July 27. “One reason the US runs a large bilateral trade deficit with Europe is that we have a large multilateral deficit overall,” Robert C. Johnson, an associate professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame, told us. The multilateral deficit refers to the total U.S. deficit in goods and services with all trading partners. Johnson said this reflects macroeconomic forces related to Americans investing more money in the U.S. economy than they save, leading them to “borrow from abroad” to account for the difference. The economic experts also said that increasing the tariff rate on imports of EU goods is not guaranteed to reduce the existing trade deficit. Trump’s Reasoning Trump announced that a tentative trade deal had been reached on July 27, after he met with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, at one of his golf clubs in Scotland. In addition to the 15% tariff on EU goods, he said that EU representatives agreed to purchase $750 billion worth of U.S. energy, invest $600 billion more into the U.S. economy and buy an unspecified amount of American-made military equipment. Trump shakes hands with von der Leyen as he announces a trade deal with the EU at Trump Turnberry golf club on July 27 in Scotland. Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images. Trump also said the deal would allow imports of U.S. goods into those European nations at a 0% tariff rate. But in a July 28 press conference, Maroš Šefčovič, the European commissioner for trade and economic security, said “both sides will apply a zero tariff rate” on a “significant list of goods” — not all products. Reuters reported that list of goods included aircraft and parts, some generic drugs and chemicals, natural resources, and some agricultural products. The complete terms have not been revealed, and the trade agreement still needs to be approved by all the individual EU countries. Trump had threatened weeks ago – in a July 11 letter to von der Leyen – to implement a 30% baseline tariff on U.S. imports of EU goods if no deal was reached by the start of August. “Please understand that these Tariffs are necessary to correct the many years of European Union Tariff, and Non-Tariff, Policies and Trade Barriers, which cause the large and unsustainable Trade Deficits against the United States,” the letter said. “This Deficit is a major threat to our economy and, indeed, our National Security!” In 2024, the U.S. exported $666.7 billion in goods and services to the EU, while it imported more than $815.1 billion — producing a trade deficit of roughly $148.4 billion. In raw numbers, it was the largest deficit the U.S. has had with the EU, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data going back to 1999. (The U.S. regularly has a trade surplus in services with the EU but a larger deficit in goods. Trump usually cites only the deficit in goods, ignoring the surplus in services.) In his letter to von der Leyen, Trump had argued that even a 30% tariff “is far less than what is needed to eliminate the Trade Deficit disparity we have with the EU.” But as we said, the experts we asked said that EU tariffs and nontariff policies are not the main factor causing the annual trade deficit. Other Reasons for the Deficit To support the president’s claim about the cause of the trade deficit, a White House official directed us to a 2021 report from the U.S. Trade Representative that identified certain tariffs and nontariff barriers that the USTR said keep U.S. exporters and investors from “entering, maintaining, or expanding their presence in certain sectors of the EU market.” But Gene M. Grossman, a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, called it “absurd” to say that EU tariffs are behind the deficit since “the average tariff on US exports to the EU is low and very similar to the average tariff on EU imports to the US.” In an email, he told us that the EU does have “moderately high tariffs on a few goods,” such as automobiles and agricultural products. But “so does the US,” he said. In a Q&A published in February, the European Commission said “considering the actual trade in goods between the EU and US, in practice the average tariff rate on both sides is approximately 1%.” Bruegel, an economics-focused think tank in Brussels, similarly reported in April that, as of 2024, the average U.S. tariff rate on imports from the EU was 1.47%, while it was 1.35% on EU imports from the U.S. Johnson, the Notre Dame professor, said U.S. and EU tariffs have been low because of a series of negotiations occurring over decades. “We lowered our tariffs in exchange for reductions by Europe, so tariff reductions were broadly balanced overall (though not sector-by-sector),” he told us. As for nontariff barriers, which are policies designed to limit imports in favor of domestic industries or to protect domestic interests, an analysis published in April by researchers with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis did find that the EU uses nontariff measures to a greater degree than the U.S. The authors said the EU “has a

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino. In recent months, U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary has amplified unfounded concerns about the safety of seed oils, a subset of vegetable oils used in infant formula. There isn’t evidence these fat sources are harmful to infants. “Generally, they’re believed to be pro-inflammatory,” Makary said of seed oils on June 4 in an interview on “Fox & Friends,” echoing claims that wellness influencers have spread about seed oils, despite a lack of evidence they are harmful when included in people’s diets, as we’ve written before. “We don’t want babies with general body inflammation. Forty percent of our nation’s kids have a chronic condition. Many of those are tied to inflammation and insulin resistance,” he said. In a June 6 appearance on Fox News, the commissioner grouped seed oils and other formula ingredients with contaminants. “Moms want baby formula without seed oil, without corn syrup, without added sugar, without arsenic and lead and other heavy metals,” he said. And in a July 10 statement, while touting his efforts to explore bringing “additional and healthier options without ingredients like seed oils, added sugars and heavy metals to market,” Makary again implied that seed oils are unhealthy and that it’s feasible to remove them from baby formula. Makary’s statements came as he promoted Operation Stork Speed, an FDA effort announced March 18 to revisit nutrition standards and strategies for reducing contaminants in infant formula. Experts in infant nutrition are broadly supportive of these goals. But the inclusion of seed oils on Makary’s list of concerns is unfounded, experts told us. “There is no evidence at present” that infant formulas without seed oils constitute healthier choices, Dr. Steven Abrams, a neonatologist who studies infant nutrition at the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School, told us via email. He added that he was unaware of available infant formulas in the U.S. or Europe that do not contain seed oils. “There’s no scientific concern about these seed oils that they are talking about,” Dr. Mark R. Corkins, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, also told us. He added that humans need a high-fat diet at the beginning of life and that vegetable oils contain “some of the essential fatty acids that we need for tissues that are fat-dependent.”  There is some scientific basis for concern about which sugars should be used in infant formula, as we’ll explain. But the broad implication that “added sugar” in infant formula is unhealthy is misleading, since breast milk contains the sugar lactose. All formulas need to have at least some added sugar, preferably in the form of lactose. We asked HHS for support for Makary’s statements implying seed oils and added sugars in baby formula are unhealthy. A spokesperson said that the remarks “reflect a broader goal of aligning FDA oversight with emerging science and evolving public health priorities.” “The FDA is actively exploring ways to support innovation in the infant formula market that meets the highest standards for infant health, while also addressing parental concerns about specific ingredients such as added sugars, seed oils, and heavy metals,” the spokesperson said. To be clear, heavy metals are not intentional ingredients in any infant formula. These contaminants, which are naturally present in the environment and are also spread by pollution, can be found at some level in foods and breast milk. A report released by Consumer Reports the same day Operation Stork Speed was announced found variable levels of the contaminants in different formulas. However, levels were within international standards, Abrams and a co-author noted in a perspective piece published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The article also expressed support for conducting further research and setting standards for heavy metals in infant formula. Seed Oils Are Standard, Safe Formula Ingredients Claims on social media about seed oils in infant formula are an extension of unjustified claims from wellness influencers that these oils are harmful when eaten in foods. The evidence in adults doesn’t indicate harm from seed oils — and in fact suggests some possible benefits, particularly when used in place of saturated fat. In baby formula, seed oils are universal because they provide a source of necessary fatty acids. “Commonly seen statements on social media that seed oils should be completely removed from formulas or that seed oils are not present in formulas originating in Europe are incorrect and inconsistent with the need for essential fatty acids in any sole source nutritional product for infants,” Abrams’ perspective piece said. Photo by Syda Productions / stock.adobe.com Decades ago, the FDA began requiring a minimum amount of an omega-6 fatty acid, linoleic acid, in infant formula to avoid deficiencies in essential fatty acids — or fatty acids that the human body cannot make itself. To meet this fatty acid requirement, formula makers use vegetable oils made from the seeds of plants, such as soybean, safflower and sunflower oil. The FDA also bases its regulations on the composition of human milk, Abrams said. Human breast milk is relatively high in linoleic acid compared with cow milk. Corkins added that the fat in whole cow milk is “hard to digest” for infants. The claim that seed oils are “pro-inflammatory” stems from the finding that among the fatty acids, the omega-6 fatty acids “tend to be more involved in the pathways when you have inflammation in your body,” Corkins said, adding that an appropriate level of inflammation is not harmful. A different type of fatty acid, omega-3s, “tend to be more in the pathways that cool things off,” he said, “but that is a generalization, and it’s not all one way or the other.” Humans need some omega-6 fatty acids, he said, and they are recommended as part of a healthy diet by the American Heart Association. Moreover, research has indicated that consuming linoleic acid — the type of omega-6 fatty acid required in infant formula — does not lead to excess inflammation in the body. Some influencers who have long misled on seed oils include those who promote animal products. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has himself endorsed

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino. In justifying the United States’ rejection of updates to global health regulations, the Department of Health and Human Services and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. falsely claimed that the policy would give the World Health Organization the ability to “order global lockdowns” or “travel restrictions” in response to a pandemic. Experts told us that is “entirely untrue” and “clearly” incorrect. On July 18, HHS issued a press release stating that the government was formally rejecting amendments to the WHO’s International Health Regulations, which had been adopted by member states last June. The regulations describe the rights and obligations of both the WHO and member countries in preparing for and responding to public health events, including pandemics. (Although President Donald Trump notified the WHO that the U.S. intends to exit the group, the U.S. still needed to say by July 19 if it opposed the amendments, as the process is separate.) Echoing false claims on social media that have for years exaggerated the power of the WHO, particularly about policy changes negotiated following the COVID-19 pandemic, HHS incorrectly said that the newly revised IHR “would give the WHO the ability to order global lockdowns, travel restrictions, or any other measures it sees fit to respond to nebulous ‘potential public health risks.’” In a video addressing the American public, Kennedy made the same claim, citing “national sovereignty” as the first reason why the U.S. was rejecting the amendments.  “Nations who accept the new regulations are signing over their power in health emergencies to an unelected international organization that could order lockdowns, travel restrictions, or any other measures,” he said. He also claimed that the policy “lays the groundwork for global medical surveillance of every human being,” since it “contains provisions about global systems of health IDs, vaccine passports and a centralized medical database.” “Are we going to be subjects to a technocratic control system that uses ‘health risks’ and ‘pandemic preparedness’ as a Trojan horse to curtail basic democratic freedoms?” Kennedy asked. “Do we want a future where every person, every movement, every transaction and every human body is under surveillance at all times?” Later in the video, Kennedy acknowledged that “many of these amendments are phrased to be non-binding,” but said that “as a practical matter, it’s hard for many countries to resist them,” calling the agreement “bad for the entire world.” But Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University who helped draft the amendments, told us that it’s not just that the IHR lacks teeth, but that the regulations also don’t do what Kennedy claims. “National sovereignty is expressly built into the IHR amendments,” he said in an email. “There is indeed a lack of any enforcement mechanism but even if it could be enforced, there is nothing in the IHR that undermines national sovereignty. It is entirely untrue.” “The IHR encourages international cooperation in rapidly detecting and responding to novel outbreaks,” he added. “That is decidedly in America’s core national interests.” “States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to legislate and to implement legislation in pursuance of their health policies,” the text of the IHR reads.  Throughout, the document refers to “recommendations” the WHO may make as a result of a particular health risk, which are defined in the IHR as “non-binding advice.” “WHO has no authority to tell countries what to do. We cannot impose travel bans, lockdowns, vaccine mandates or any other type of measure. Nor do we seek to,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general, said in remarks during a July 23 press briefing. “That is clearly laid out in our founding document, the WHO Constitution. Our job is to provide evidence-based recommendations and guidelines, and to support countries to protect and improve the health of their populations. But how or whether countries implement that advice has always been and always will be up to them, based on their national guidelines and rules.” A WHO webpage about the IHR amendments also iterates this point. Ayelet Berman, a global health law expert at the National University of Singapore, explained that under article 12 of the IHR, the director-general can declare a public health emergency of international concern, or PHEIC — and now, under the updated IHR, a “pandemic emergency,” which serves as the highest level alert. With those declarations, the director-general can issue temporary or standing recommendations under articles 15 and 16. “These are legally non-binding: member states are not legally obligated to follow them. Therefore, it is incorrect to say that the WHO has legal powers to ‘ORDER’ lockdowns or any other public health measures for that matter,” she told us in an email. “The organization can issue recommendations, but it cannot compel states to implement specific measures.” She said, however, that the recommendations carry significant weight, which may be what the Trump administration is concerned about. “Even though they are not enforceable by law, failure to follow them could lead to international scrutiny/political backlash,” she said. “Hence, these recommendations may shape how governments respond and how they are perceived globally and at home.” Gian Luca Burci, a senior visiting professor of international law at the Geneva Graduate Institute, called HHS’ statement “clearly” incorrect. “WHO of course expects governments and other stakeholders to take its recommendation seriously, and at the very least not to fall below that standard in their national measures, but the recommendations are what their name says; they are obviously not binding orders and do not deprive states from taking their own final decisions on the national measures they consider necessary,” he told us in an email. “That is clearly stated in article 43 of the IHR and that is exactly what happened during the COVID pandemic, when WHO was not recommending total border closure or mass lockdowns but several states did precisely that.” Kennedy’s claims about global medical surveillance are also unwarranted. “The IHR certainly does not require vaccine passports but actually discourages them,” Gostin said. “There is

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard claims to have uncovered “overwhelming evidence” that former President Barack Obama and others in his administration manipulated intelligence to “lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.” But the foundation for her case is misleading. Gabbard’s claim relies heavily on an alleged contradiction between a Jan. 6, 2017, intelligence assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an “influence campaign” in an attempt to help elect Donald Trump and earlier intelligence assessments that concluded Russia did not successfully use cyberattacks on election infrastructure in the 2016 election. But those two assessments are not in contradiction. “No one ever claimed Russia altered votes, but everyone claims that Russia tried to interfere on Trump’s behalf,” Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a video message posted on X on July 21. That interference was “well documented” and “well vetted” not only by the Intelligence Community but also by a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee and as part of then special counsel Robert S. Mueller’s report, he said. Nonetheless, on Fox News on July 20, Gabbard said she was “referring all of the documents that we have uncovered to the Department of Justice and the FBI for a criminal referral,” adding, “In my view, we have the evidence to be able to move forward and bring about justice, yes, to prosecute and indict those responsible.” Trump has picked up on Gabbard’s statements, posting to Truth Social a fake video showing Obama being handcuffed by FBI agents as well as a message that said there is now “Irrefutable EVIDENCE” that Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden perpetrated “THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY!” In a press conference on July 22, Trump claimed Gabbard had “caught President Obama absolutely cold. … And there should be very severe consequences for that.” “After what they did to me and whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people,” Trump said. “Obama’s been caught directly. … Look, he’s guilty. … This was treason, this was every word you can think of. They tried to steal the election. They tried to obfuscate the election.” Obama’s office responded on July 22 with a statement on Gabbard’s memo and release of unsealed documents, saying, “Nothing in the document issued undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes.” “These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction,” Obama’s office said. Gabbard’s Case Gabbard, who was a Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who ran for the party’s nomination in 2020 and left the party in 2022, announced on July 18 what she said was “new evidence” of an Obama administration “conspiracy to subvert President Trump’s 2016 victory and presidency.” In her press release, Gabbard wrote, “In the months leading up to the November 2016 election, the Intelligence Community (IC) consistently assessed that Russia is ‘probably not trying … to influence the election by using cyber means.’” As her unsealed documents show, Gabbard was citing a Sept. 9, 2016, email from an intelligence official who wrote, “Russia probably is not … trying to influence the election by using cyber means to manipulate computer-enabled election infrastructure.” (Emphasis is ours.) Gabbard misleadingly claimed the assessments changed after a White House meeting of Obama’s top National Security Council principals on Dec. 9, 2016. She said the IC was tasked with creating a new assessment at Obama’s request that led to the Jan. 6, 2017, release of a declassified Intelligence Community report that concluded “President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election.” In addition to a sophisticated social media campaign in support of Trump’s candidacy, the report said Russian intelligence services gained access to the Democratic National Committee computer network and released hacked material to WikiLeaks and other outlets “to help President-elect Trump’s election chances.” Gabbard claimed that assessment “directly contradicted the IC assessments that were made throughout the previous six months.” Gabbard created a timeline that purports to detail how the Intelligence Community’s assessment changed over time, and she linked to 114 pages of newly unsealed intelligence documents and communications to lay out her case. But Gabbard conflated assessments that Russia was not successful in hacking voting infrastructure to alter the election results with intelligence documenting Russia’s efforts to influence the election by swaying the American electorate’s opinions. For example, Gabbard cited: An Aug. 31, 2016, email from a Department of Homeland Security official to then DNI James Clapper about an analysis of local voting infrastructure that found “there is no indication of a Russian threat to directly manipulate the actual vote count through cyber means.” A Sept. 9, 2016, memo from an official in Clapper’s office arguing that a presidential briefing should note that Russia “probably is not trying … to influence the election by using cyber means” to “manipulate … election infrastructure.” A Sept. 12, 2016, Intelligence Community assessment on cyberthreats to the election that concluded, “We judge that foreign adversaries do not have and will probably not obtain the capabilities to successfully execute widespread and undetected cyber attacks on the diverse set of information technologies and infrastructures used to support the November 2016 US presidential election.” A post-election series of talking points prepared for Clapper to deliver in a Dec. 7 presidential briefing report, including that “[f]oreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the US Presidential election outcome” and that “[w]e have no evidence of cyber manipulation of election infrastructure intended to alter results.” Gabbard claimed the assessment changed after a Dec. 9, 2016, meeting of National Security Council principals, including Clapper, John Brennan, and Susan Rice, the then CIA director, and national security adviser, respectively. The Gabbard memo accompanying her press release cited a subsequent email from Clapper’s assistant to his top aides directing them to “produce an assessment per

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino. In recent speeches and media scrums, President Donald Trump has lauded the federal budget surplus for the month of June, claiming the surplus had not happened in “many, many years” or “decades.” To be clear, the U.S. had not recorded a surplus in June since 2016 – but the country has had several surpluses in other months since that time. Furthermore, while Trump has attributed the surplus in June to “good management and tariffs,” the latter of which have produced record revenue, the Congressional Budget Office said there would have been a budget deficit last month if the government had not made billions of dollars in payments in May that are usually paid in June. Also, as of June, the U.S. still had an overall budget deficit of more than $1.3 trillion through the first nine months of fiscal year 2025, according to Treasury Department data. That’s about $64 billion more than the deficit during the same period in fiscal year 2024. Photo by splitov27 / stock.adobe.com Trump first mentioned the roughly $27 billion surplus in June during remarks at the White House Faith Office luncheon on July 14 – and he sounded surprised by the news. “And on Friday, it was announced that the United States Treasury ran a budget surplus. Is that true, Scott?” Trump said, asking Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who was in attendance. “In June, for the first time in many, many decades. Wow! I didn’t know that.” Trump told Bessent that he would add that information to his “repertoire,” and the president has since mentioned the June surplus several times, including in July 15 remarks at the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit in Pittsburgh. “And did you notice that two days ago they just announced that they had a budget surplus of $25 billion in this country,” he told attendees, referring to the June surplus, which he lowered by about $2 billion. “They never saw anything like that. Everyone’s saying where did that — that’s been like decades.” But it has happened before, and it wasn’t as long ago as he suggested. In fact, prior to June, the most recent monthly surplus was in April, when government revenue exceeded its expenditures by about $258 billion, according to the Treasury. And most recently before that, there were six months with surpluses during the Biden administration (January 2022, April 2022, April 2023, August 2023, April 2024 and September 2024). Trump may have been referring to the last time there was a surplus in June — that was June 2016, during the Obama administration, which still wasn’t “decades” ago. Kent Smetters, a professor of business economics and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania, told us that federal budget surpluses regularly occur in April, because of Tax Day, which is the deadline for most U.S. tax filers to submit their annual income tax returns and make tax payments. He said that surpluses also tend to occur in June, which the Wall Street Journal noted “is one of Treasury’s biggest revenue months of the year … because it’s a month when companies and individuals file their quarterly estimated tax payments.” For example, the Treasury recorded four consecutive surpluses in June from 2013 to 2016. There have also been a number of surpluses in the month of September, which is the last month of the third quarter of the calendar year. As we said, Trump has credited this year’s June surplus to tariffs and fiscal restraint. New tariffs that Trump put in place this year did help. Last month, the government brought in about $26.6 billion in revenue from tariffs, or customs duties – a 321% increase from the $6.3 billion collected in the same month last year. June was the second straight month in which revenue from tariffs reached well over $20 billion, and the CBO recently estimated that a number of tariffs implemented earlier this year, between Jan. 6 and May 13, could reduce total federal deficits by $2.8 trillion over 10 years. But tariffs aside, the CBO said there was another major reason that there was a June surplus instead of a deficit: the shifting of certain federal expenditures from June to May. In its most recent “Monthly Budget Review,” the CBO said that federal spending was lower than it would have been in June because the government made billions of dollars in payments in May that were due on June 1, a Sunday. The Treasury said that some payments for active-duty military, veterans, Supplemental Security Income and Medicare were moved to May because June 1, the normal payment date, was a non-business day. “If not for those [timing] shifts, the government would have recorded a deficit of $71 billion in June 2025,” the CBO said, emphasizing the word deficit. So, Trump was off on the timing of previous budget surpluses, and he overlooked a key reason for the most recent surplus in June. Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102.  The post Trump’s Hollow Surplus Claim appeared first on FactCheck.org.

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino. Contrary to President Donald Trump’s claim that no one will die as a result of the Republican budget bill, an analysis from the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University estimated that the legislation’s changes to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act will result in at least 42,500 preventable deaths each year. At the same time, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders has slightly overstated the estimate. In the run-up to and in the wake of the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed into law on July 4, politicians of both parties have sparred over the budget reconciliation bill’s effects on mortality. Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, have said that “tens of thousands” of people will die as a result of losing health insurance. “51,000 Americans will die each year so that the top 1% can get a $1 trillion tax break,” Sanders wrote in a July 3 post on X. “This bill is a death sentence.” Sanders repeated the claim in a July 9 post, using a figure of “more than 50,000.” Meanwhile, Trump has insisted that the Democratic talking point isn’t true. “The Democrats have come up with a false narrative. … It’s death, death, everyone’s going to die,” he said in a July 8 Cabinet meeting. As he had before, Trump said that the bill was “just the opposite. Everyone’s going to live.” “Somebody gave them a soundbite, ‘it’s going to cause death,’” Trump said in a July 12 interview on Fox News, referring to Democrats and the law. “It is not going to cause death. It’s going to keep people alive and it’s going to make our country successful.” Sanders is using a higher estimate than he should, but researchers at Yale and Penn’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics projected in June that the House-passed version of the bill would “result in more than 42,500 deaths annually.”  The tally includes 11,300 deaths as a result of people losing Medicaid or Affordable Care Act marketplace insurance, as well as 18,200 deaths from low-income Medicare patients losing prescription drug benefits and 13,000 deaths from rescinding a Biden-era rule that required a higher minimum staffing level in nursing homes.  The group, which performed its analysis in response to an inquiry from Sanders and Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, based its projections on a preliminary Congressional Budget Office estimate that 7.7 million people would lose insurance coverage as a result of the bill. The CBO later projected that due to the House bill, 10.9 million people would be uninsured in 2034, a figure that includes 7.8 million becoming uninsured because of Medicaid changes in the bill and 3.1 million losing coverage due to changes to the Affordable Care Act. The CBO hasn’t yet provided an estimate for the final legislation, but said that a modified Senate version of that bill would increase the uninsured by 11.8 million people in 2034. Dr. Rachel Werner, a co-author of the analysis and LDI’s executive director, told us in an email that it’s “incorrect to say that no one will die as a result” of the legislation. “There is strong evidence that Medicaid coverage saves lives,” she said. Photo by Orathai / stock.adobe.com “Getting someone insurance allows them to get screened for diseases like cancer. It’s a major source of providing people with treatment for the opioid epidemic,” Werner explained in a conversation with the Tradeoffs podcast. “It allows people to get medications to manage their chronic conditions. And so if you suddenly pull back all those resources that have been allowing people to get the care they need, the evidence is very clear now that we will lose lives.” Another projection, published in mid-June in the Annals of Internal Medicine by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the City University of New York, estimated that the House bill’s Medicaid spending cuts would lead to between 8,200 and 24,600 medically preventable deaths a year, with a mid-range estimate of 16,642.  The study’s estimate, Werner explained, is “comparable” to the single 11,300 component of deaths from loss of insurance in her group’s total estimate. As she said on the Tradeoffs podcast, “we’re at the low end of that range, which is reassuring to us.” Both the Harvard-CUNY and Penn-Yale authors have noted that the CBO estimates themselves may be low. When doing its calculations, the CBO assumed that states, which will lose some federal Medicaid funding under the bill, would use state money to make up for half of those losses. “I think that that is a long shot,” Werner told Tradeoffs. “States budgets are very tight right now. Some states may be able to make up half of what they lose from the federal government, but I think it’s not a stretch to say most states can’t. And so if the funding that’s available for Medicaid goes down more than the CBO estimated, more people are going to lose access to coverage. So I think that I’m pretty confident that we are at the low end of the right ballpark.” Both projections capture only a portion of the possible mortality effects. Dr. Eric Roberts, a co-author of the Penn-Yale analysis, said that his estimate does not include any deaths that might result from potential hospital closures, for example. We asked the White House if they were aware of the Penn-Yale analysis and for support for Trump’s claim that the budget law would not lead to preventable deaths. “Reporters ignoring the commonsense reforms of The One, Big, Beautiful Bill that protect and preserve Medicaid while raising wages and growth to instead push debunked Democrat talking points with these sort of pointless ‘fact checks’ that rely on mindless hairsplitting is exactly why public trust in the media is at a record low,” White House spokesman Kush Desai replied in an email. As for Sanders’ 51,000 figure, the number appears in the Penn-Yale estimate, and a Sanders spokesperson confirmed the analysis was the source of his claim. But it reflects an additional 8,811 preventable deaths that come from not extending expanded ACA premium