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CLINTON: "It's true that too often, past trade deals have been sold to the American people with rosy scenarios that didn't pan out. … I will stop any trade deal that kills jobs or holds down wages — including the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I oppose it now, I'll oppose it after the election and I'll oppose it as president."
THE FACTS: She didn’t oppose the Pacific deal when she was secretary of state, but rather promoted it. In 2012, during a trip to Australia, she called it the “gold standard” of trade agreements. She flip-flopped into opposition in the Democratic primary when facing Sen. Bernie Sanders, who was vehemently opposed to it.
Clinton says she no longer backs the trade deal as written because it does not provide enough protections for U.S. workers on wages, jobs and the country's national security.
In the past, Clinton has defended the North American Free Trade Agreement, which her husband shepherded through Congress in 1993. Speaking of "rosy scenarios," Bill Clinton, while lobbying for its passage, said NAFTA would create 200,000 jobs in its first two years and a million jobs in its first five years. The Peterson Institute for International Economics, a think-tank that supports free trade, in 2014 called that claim "overblown."
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CLINTON: "We have the most dynamic, productive workforce in the world, bar none."
THE FACTS: Actually, bar two. Luxembourg and Norway have more productive workforces, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
More concerning is the fact that U.S. productivity has been slipping in recent years.
Productivity, or the amount of output per hour worked, is a measure of how efficient an economy is. The U.S. is third in the world, says the OECD, a group of mostly rich countries. But American productivity has been extraordinarily weak since the recession began in December 2007, a trend that could weigh on economic growth and incomes. Higher productivity makes it possible for employers to pay their workers more without raising prices.
Productivity fell 0.4 percent in the April-June quarter compared with a year earlier. That was the fourth time productivity has fallen from a year earlier since the recession began. Before that, productivity hadn’t fallen since 1993.
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CLINTON: "According to an independent analysis by a former economic adviser to Sen. John McCain, if you add up all of Trump's ideas — from cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations to starting a trade war with China to deporting millions of hard-working immigrants — the result would be a loss of 3.4 million jobs. By contrast, the same analyst found that with our plans, the economy would create more than 10 million new jobs."
THE FACTS: First, Clinton persists in citing a former McCain adviser — the respected Moody's Analytics economist and forecaster Mark Zandi — without mentioning that Zandi is a donor to her campaign.
As well, she did not fully capture what Zandi estimated when she quoted him as saying her plans would add 10 million jobs. Zandi actually estimated job gains of 7.2 million in the next presidential term if there are no policy changes.
He estimated her plans would add 3.2 million jobs to that baseline. She’s taking credit for jobs expected to grow even if the economy were essentially on auto pilot.
Further, the analysis Clinton quotes for Donald Trump was released in June, so it doesn't account for revisions in his economic plans, such as his intention to make the top marginal tax rate for individuals 33 percent, instead of the 25 percent analyzed by Zandi. Still, the outdated analysis says that there would be fewer jobs after four years of a Trump administration than exists today.
Also worth noting: Most forecasts are extremely speculative and seldom correspond with what really happens in the economy.
EDITOR’S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures
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