As part of his Asian trip, Donald Trump spoke at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea about some good news he’d received a day earlier. “Yesterday I was with Mr. Toyoda in Japan, and he’s just announced he’s gonna spend, they’re gonna spend $10 billion, and they’re gonna build new car plants,” the president claimed, referring to Akio Toyoda, the CEO of Toyota. “And they’re gonna build ’em in numerous states.”
The Republican was apparently so pleased with the developments that he told the story more than once. However, there was an important problem: The anecdote wasn’t altogether true. Reuters reported:
Japan’s Toyota Motor did not explicitly promise a new $10 billion investment in the United States, a senior executive said on Wednesday, a day after President Donald Trump mentioned a potential investment of that size. … Toyota executive Hiroyuki Ueda told reporters that in talks with the Japanese government and the U.S. embassy ahead of Trump’s visit, no such explicit promise was made about an investment of that size, adding Toyota would continue to invest and create jobs in America.
The executive tried to explain the possible reasoning for the misunderstanding, though he concluded, “[W]e didn’t specifically say that we’ll invest $10 billion over the next few years.”
Reuters’ report added that Ueda also said the topic of investment did not come up when the Toyota chairman briefly spoke to Trump at a U.S. Embassy event on Tuesday evening.
Similarly, The New York Times noted that the Trump White House also issued a memo this week claiming that Toyota would begin importing vehicles it made in the U.S. to Japan. The automaker clarified a day later that this might not actually happen, that it was only “considering” such a move. All of this stood out as notable, in part because of Trump’s willingness to make claims that aren’t true, but also because of his specific claims about foreign investments. As we’ve discussed, the American president has in recent weeks inflated investment totals in ways that are practically cartoonish, boasting about several trillion dollars that will never materialize and that are badly at odds with his own White House’s figures. The Toyota story is an extension of the same problem, offering a fresh reminder that those who accept the Republican’s claims at face value are making a terrible mistake.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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