Walz vs Vance debate: 12 statements examined

Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance faced off in New York City on Tuesday night for their one and only vice-presidential debate, hosted by CBS News.

Reuters examined 12 statements made by the two running mates.

While Reuters monitored the entire debate, this fact check did not examine every statement. It focuses on topics and narratives that are part of broader public discourse and can be assessed with credible evidence.

STATEMENTS BY WALZ

CLAIM

Walz said that the U.S. is producing more natural gas and more oil than ever before. (Timestamp 9:15 p.m. ET)

WHAT WE KNOW

This is mostly true. In March 2024, the government Energy Information Administration said in a release that the U.S. had produced “more crude oil than any nation at any time” for a sixth straight year. The report added that it is unlikely the record for 2023 will be broken by another country in the “near term,” as none have a production capacity of 13.0 million barrels per day. The U.S. averaged 12.9 million barrels per day that year.

Monthly production of dry natural gas in the U.S. reached a record high in December 2023, having steadily increased through most of the past decade. However, production is forecast to decline in 2024, which would mark the first time output declined since 2020.

CLAIM

“Donald Trump hasn’t paid any federal tax in 10 of the last 15 years, and the last year as president.” (9:35 p.m.)

WHAT WE KNOW

This is mostly true based on the information available. In 2020, the New York Times reported, based on an analysis of tax return data from 2017, that Trump had paid no income taxes in 10 of the previous 15 years. This was “largely because he reported losing much more money than he made,” the Times said. Trump did pay $750 the year he won the 2016 election, the paper added, as well as in his first year in the White House. Trump had dismissed the report as "fake news.”

In 2022, the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee released Trump’s tax returns for 2015 through 2020, which showed that Trump paid no income tax during the final full year of his presidency. “Trump and his wife, Melania, paid some form of tax during all four years, the documents showed, but were able to minimize their income taxes in several years as income from Trump's businesses was more than offset by deductions and losses,” Reuters reported.

CLAIM

Minnesota’s child tax credit “reduces childhood poverty by a third.” (9:30 p.m.) WHAT WE KNOW

This is unknown. The 2023 child tax credit program for low- and middle-income families was projected to cut child poverty in Minnesota by one-third based on an analysis by Columbia University’s Center on Poverty & Social Policy.

No report examining whether the child tax credit program did result in a one-third reduction in child poverty in the state has been published.

An August 2024 press release by the governor noted figures from the state’s Department of Revenue that said the program “put over $545 million into the budgets of more than 215,000 Minnesota families” between 2023 and 2024.

CLAIM

Minnesota is ranked first in healthcare (9:46 p.m.)

WHAT WE KNOW

This depends on who you ask. It is true based on data published in July 2024 by the financial information site WalletHub, which Walz has previously cited as governor of Minnesota.

The site ranked Minnesota as the state with the best healthcare system that provides low healthcare costs, a high number of convenient care clinics per capita, a high-quality public hospital system and low emergency room wait times.

Minnesota also topped the chart in a Forbes analysis, but other rankings with different methodologies rate the states differently.

CLAIM “Minneapolis is the one city where we've seen the lowest inflation rates,” the Minnesota governor said. (10:07 p.m.)

WHAT WE KNOW This is mostly true during certain periods in the past 1.5 years. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on the 12-month percentage change in the Consumer Price Index, which measures inflation across metropolitan areas, found that the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area recorded the lowest inflation rate in the country in May and July 2023, and again in March 2024.

CLAIM

Walz said Trump created the largest trade deficit in American history with China. (9:34 p.m. ET)

WHAT WE KNOW

This is true. The U.S. trade deficit in goods with China reached a record high during Trump’s second year in the White House. The trade gap rose by 11.6% to $419.2 billion in 2018, from the previous record of $375.5 billion in 2017, a Commerce Department report showed in 2019.

In 2018 under Trump, the U.S. imposed tariffs on $250 billion worth of goods imported from China, with Beijing then retaliating with duties on $110 billion worth of American products, including soybeans and other commodities.

STATEMENTS BY VANCE

CLAIM

Vance said Iran “received over $100 billion in unfrozen assets thanks to the Kamala Harris administration.” (Timestamp 9:06 p.m.)

WHAT WE KNOW

This is mixed. In August 2023, U.S. President Joe Biden approved a prisoner swap deal between the U.S. and Iran that involved the unfreezing of $6 billion in Iranian funds that were frozen in South Korea.

After the Iranian-backed Palestinian group Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the U.S. said five days later that Iran would not gain access to the funds, parked in a Qatari bank, anytime soon and that Washington retained the right to freeze the funds.

Separately, Biden had previously sought to revive a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which had been abandoned by Donald Trump. The talks stalled in September 2022.

In 2015, U.S. officials said that the deal would give Iran access to $100 billion in frozen assets if implemented. Former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said in 2022 that the deal would give Tehran $100 billion a year to destabilize the Middle East, but did not provide details for the calculation.

CLAIM “When was the last time that an American president did not have a major conflict break out? The only answer is during the four years Donald Trump was president,” Vance said. (9:10 p.m.)

WHAT WE KNOW

This needs more context. Trump joins other presidents such as Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower in not officially bringing the U.S. into a new war since 1945.

Trump's presidency, however, involved military hostilities and the risk of new wars. Trump ordered in 2020 a drone strike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, and launched in 2017 an attack on a Syrian army base, a move that marked an escalation of the U.S. military’s role in Syria.

The former president also said in 2017 during a speech to the United Nations General Assembly that he would “totally destroy” North Korea.

CLAIM

Vance said the U.S. is “the cleanest economy in the entire world.” (9:12 p.m.)

WHAT WE KNOW

This is false. According to the EU’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research 2024 report, the U.S. was second only to China as the highest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions globally last year.

The U.S. accounted for 11.25% of global greenhouse gas emissions, while China represented 30.1%.

Per capita, greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 for the U.S. stood at 17.61 tons of CO2 equivalent, higher than China’s 11.11, the UK’s 5.55, and Mexico’s 5.15, but lower than Canada’s 19.39 and Russia’s 18.66.

In a 2024 World Economic Forum report on the Global Average Energy Transition Index, a measure of performance and readiness for clean energy transition, the U.S. ranked 19th. Sweden tops the list, followed by Denmark, Finland, Switzerland and France.

According to this year’s Environmental Performance Index - a project by Yale and Columbia universities that evaluates countries based on indicators like climate change mitigation, air pollution, deforestation and biodiversity protection - the rankings put Estonia in pole position, followed by Luxembourg, and Germany. The U.S. ranks 34th.

CLAIM When discussing ways to address carbon emissions, Vance said Kamala Harris' policies have led to "more energy production in China, more manufacturing overseas" (9:13 p.m.)

WHAT WE KNOW Vance could be referring to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that provides incentives to boost domestic energy production and manufacturing investment, including support for clean energy jobs and the sale of new and used electric vehicles.

The impact of the IRA on the U.S. manufacturing sector is still too early to tell, but some research has found it has benefited domestic clean energy manufacturing.

The IRA provides billions of dollars in tax credits to help consumers buy EVs and firms to produce renewable energy as part of the Biden administration's plan to decarbonize the U.S. power sector. China, which dominates the global battery supply chain, is among the four countries excluded from the subsidy available to firms looking to invest in the U.S. EV supply chain.

China has since requested the World Trade Organization set up a panel to help settle the dispute over what it describes as "discriminatory subsidies."

Another area of the global supply chain that China dominates is solar panel production. Some Chinese-backed companies with factories in the U.S. are claiming those subsidies for clean energy manufacturing under the IRA, and a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers introduced a bill in July that would block them from claiming subsidies for their American factories.

CLAIM

Vance said Donald Trump's economic policies delivered the highest take-home pay in a generation. (9:33 p.m.)

WHAT WE KNOW

This is true. U.S. median household income reached a record high of $68,703 during the Trump administration in 2019, a 6.8% increase from 2018 – the highest the country had seen since the U.S. Census Bureau started tracking the data in 1967.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers at the time said an increase in the number of workers in the country drove the income increase. “There were 2.2 million more people working at some point in 2019 compared with 2018, and 1.2 million more people working full-time year-round,” the council added.

CLAIM

“The gross majority, close to 90% in some of the statistics I’ve seen, of the gun violence in this country is committed with illegally obtained firearms.” (10:00 p.m.)

WHAT WE KNOW

This is misleading. Most public mass shootings – a shooting that kills four or more people – between 1966 and 2019 were carried out by legally obtained handguns, according to research funded by the National Institute of Justice.

The data showed “77% of those who engaged in mass shootings purchased at least some of their guns legally,” an article on the 2021 study said, while 13% of the mass shootings involved illegally purchased firearms.

The report also noted that over 80% of individuals involved in K-12 school shootings had stolen guns from family members.

Between 2017 and 2021, over 1.4 million crime guns were traced to a known purchaser with a Federal Firearms License, of which 99% were acquired from a dealer, pawnbroker or manufacturer, according to a 2023 report (page 7) by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

These crime guns, however, “may change hands a number of times after that first retail sale, and some of those transactions may be a theft or violate one or more regulations on firearm commerce,” the report adds (page 41).