In this week’s fact-checking video, CNN’s Jake Tapper discusses President Donald Trump’s remarks at his June 21 Iowa rally about coal mining jobs.
As we wrote in our story, “FactChecking Trump’s Iowa Rally,” the president again claimed he has reversed the trend of coal mining job losses, and misleadingly pointed to the opening of a new coal mine in Pennsylvania as evidence that his policies have led to a resurgence in coal mining. Neither of those is true.
The Corsa Coal Company’s Acosta Deep Mine near Pittsburgh opened on June 8, but that had nothing to do with Trump. As we wrote when Trump made similar boasts earlier this month, development of the Acosta mine began in September — two months before Trump’s election victory. Also, the Acosta mine produces a particular type of coal that is used to make steel. That’s a niche market in the coal industry and it is enjoying a bit of a boom because of production problems overseas.
In talking about the new Pennsylvania coal mine, Trump also said “we’re putting our miners back to work” — boasting that “33,000 mining jobs have been added since my inauguration.” That’s misleading. The 32,600 mining jobs added since January includes jobs in mining for natural gas, oil, metal ores, coal and nonmetallic mineral mining and quarrying. As for coal mining jobs, there has been an increase of 1,000 since January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This video is part of our fact-checking collaboration with CNN’s “State of the Union.” All of the videos are available on FactCheck.org.