The government support program has saved no more than 14 million jobs across the country, but U.S. President Donald Trump has multiplied this number by at least 3.5 times to add to his list of achievements.
“Through the historic aid package that I signed as a law, we saved more than 50 million American jobs”, – the White House chief said.
Economists, in turn, believe that the real number of jobs that have benefited from government support is several times less. Interviewed by the agency “Reuters” experts called the figures from one to 14 million.
“These data do not tell us how many of these jobs could exist without loans from the state program. In addition, all participants have an incentive to use overestimated estimates”, – said the analyst of fiscal policy Adam Michel.
Officials of the Ministry of Finance and the Department of Small Business are in solidarity with this position. The departments claim that 51 million is the total number of jobs at those enterprises that have received loans from the state.
“We cannot say with any certainty that all 51 million of them would otherwise lose their jobs”, – admitted a source in the Ministry of Finance.
As News Front reported earlier, the U.S. government support program is famous for numerous scandals and problems. For example, in spring it turned out that the money intended for small businesses had gone to large network companies.
In addition, due to the lack of control, the state lost hundreds of millions of dollars. The mistakes led to the fact that the request of one company could be approved several times. One of the applicants was approved four times and six other companies were approved three times.