President Donald Trump on Tuesday voiced a flurry of upbeat claims about the U.S. economy in his State of the Union address.
The speech came more than a year after Trump took office, and just days after an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll showed a majority of U.S. adults disapprove of his handling of the economy.
ABC News fact-checked some of the president’s statements, identifying claims that may have been exaggerated, lacking relevant context or false.
TRUMP CLAIM: “My administration has driven core inflation down to the lowest level in more than five years.”
FACT CHECK: Yes and no.
While it’s a positive development that inflation has come down in recent months, this hasn’t led to reduced prices across the board. The state of play is more complicated.
The facts are that when Trump took office, inflation was at 3% and today it’s down to 2.4%, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows.
The most recent inflation report was positive. But prices for everyday products for Americans are impacted by more than just inflation.
According to Moody’s Analytics, the typical American household is spending $167 more a month on the same goods and services than a year ago, $368 more than two years ago, and $568 more than three years ago.
The president’s tariffs have likely impacted the cost of fresh produce, beef and coffee. Ground coffee prices are up 34% in the past year. And even those increased costs aren’t all due to tariffs.
Bureau of Labor and Statistics data also show Americans are paying more for energy (in many cases due to the data centers needed to power AI technology), up 6.3 percent from January 2025 to January 2026.
TRUMP CLAIM: “In 12 months, I secured commitments for more than $18 trillion pouring in from all over the globe.”
FACT CHECK: Lacks evidence.
It is unclear where the $18 trillion figure comes from. It is a huge number. U.S. GDP is $31 trillion. On their website, the White House says they have secured $9.6 trillion in domestic and foreign investments since Trump took office for his second term. A White House official confirmed that this figure includes “investments that have materialized or committed,” but they did not answer ABC News’ questions about where the president’s $18 trillion is coming from.
The White House’s $9.6 trillion in investments also appears to be inflated, as other sums are included in their calculations. For example, the website lists a $1.2 trillion “foreign investment” from Qatar. But according to a White House fact sheet distributed when the deal was made, the U.S. and Qatar had agreed to “generate an economic exchange worth at least $1.2 trillion” — not an explicit investment.
-Isabella Murray and Emily Chang
TRUMP CLAIM: “The roaring economy is roaring like never before.”
FACT CHECK: Mostly false.
Economic data has sent mixed signals in recent months, but little evidence suggests that the U.S. economy is “roaring.”
Last week, a government report on gross domestic product (GDP) – widely considered the top measure of economic health – showed the economy grew at a tepid annualized pace of 1.4% over the final three months of 2025.
That reading marked a sharp slowdown from strong annualized growth of 4.4% recorded in the previous quarter, U.S. Commerce Department data showed.
Overall, GDP grew at an inflation-adjusted rate of 2.2% in 2025, which marked a slowdown from 2.8% growth in 2024, the final year of President Joe Biden’s term.
-ABC News’ Max Zahn
TRUMP CLAIM: “More Americans are working today than at any time in the history of our country.”
FACT CHECK: True, but missing relevant context.
Trump’s claim about the total number of employed Americans is accurate. As of last month, 164.5 million Americans were employed, marking the highest figure on record and an uptick from a year earlier, BLS data shows.
But the overall number of workers typically increases over time as the U.S. population gets larger.
Meanwhile, the share of the population that is employed fell slightly over the past year. The number of people age 16 or over who are employed or looking for work registered at 62.5% in January, the most recent month for which data is available. That figure came in lower than its reading of 62.6% in the same month a year prior, according to the BLS.
In addition, the pace of job gains slowed sharply in 2025, the first year of Trump’s second term. The U.S. added 181,000 jobs last year, far fewer than 584,000 jobs added in 2024.
-ABC News’ Max Zahn
TRUMP CLAIM: “As time goes by, I believe the tariffs, paid for by foreign countries, will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love.”
FACT CHECK: Lacks evidence.
Trump said he believes tariff revenue could eventually “substantially replace” government funds derived from income taxes. In theory, the move could ease the income tax burden on U.S. households and corporations.
However, it would be all but impossible to make up for the lost revenue with increased tariffs, some analysts previously told ABC News.
The individual income tax currently accounts for roughly half of the $5 trillion in revenue that the federal government brings in each year.
Payroll taxes and corporate income taxes, meanwhile, account for another 40% of U.S. tax revenue, according to the Tax Policy Center.
In 2023, the U.S. imported about $3.8 trillion worth of goods, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis found. To generate the same amount of revenue currently brought in by the individual income tax, a tariff would have needed to be set at about 70%, Alan Auerbach, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who focuses on tax policy, told ABC News.
A tariff of such magnitude would significantly reduce U.S. trade, slashing the total amount of imported goods and, in turn, reducing tax revenue.
“It wouldn’t be feasible,” Auerbach said.
-ABC News’ Max Zahn