Michael1942's Blog

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com

OpinionEconomic policy

Corporate giants are raising prices even as they rake in record profits. How can this be? Because of their unchecked power

Thu 11 Nov 2021 09.14 EST

On Wednesday, the US labor department announced that the consumer price index – a basket of products ranging from gasoline and health care to groceries and rents – rose 6.2% from a year ago. That’s the nation’s highest annual inflation rate since November 1990.

Republicans are hammering Biden and Democratic lawmakers over inflation – and attacking his economic stimulus plans as wrongheaded. “This will be a winter of high gas prices, shortages and inflation because far left lunatics control our government,” Marco Rubio, the Republican senator from Florida posted on Twitter Thursday.

A major reason for price rises is supply bottlenecks, as Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, has pointed out. He believes they’re temporary, and he’s probably right.

But there’s a deeper structural reason for inflation, one that appears to be growing worse: the economic concentration of the American economy in the hands of a relative few corporate giants with the power to raise prices.

If markets were competitive, companies would keep their prices down in order to prevent competitors from grabbing away customers.

But they’re raising prices even as they rake in record profits. How can this be? They have so much market power they can raise prices with impunity.

Viewed this way, the underlying problem isn’t inflation per se. It’s lack of competition. Corporations are using the excuse of inflation to raise prices and make fatter profits.

In April, Procter & Gamble announced it would start charging more for consumer staples ranging from diapers to toilet paper, citing “rising costs for raw materials, such as resin and pulp, and higher expenses to transport goods”.

But P&G is making huge profits. In the quarter ending 30 September, after some of its price increases went into effect, it reported a whopping 24.7% profit margin. It even spent $3bn during the quarter buying its own stock.

It could raise prices and rake in more money because P&G faces almost no competition. The lion’s share of the market for diapers, to take one example, is controlled by just two companies – P&G and Kimberly-Clark – which roughly coordinate their prices and production. It was hardly a coincidence that Kimberly-Clark announced price increases similar to P&Gs at the same time P&G announced its own price increases.

Or consider another consumer product duopoly – PepsiCo (the parent company of Frito-Lay, Gatorade, Quaker, Tropicana, and other brands), and Coca-Cola. In April, PepsiCo announced it was increasing prices, blaming “higher costs for some ingredients, freight and labor”. Rubbish. The company didn’t have to raise prices. It recorded $3bn in operating profits through September.

If PepsiCo faced tough competition, it could never have gotten away with this. But it doesn’t. To the contrary, it appears to have colluded with Coca-Cola – which, oddly, announced price increases at about the same time as PepsiCo, and has increased its profit margins to 28.9%.

You can see a similar pattern in energy prices. If energy markets were competitive, producers would have quickly ramped up production to create more supply, once it became clear that demand was growing. But they didn’t.

Why not? Industry experts say oil and gas companies saw bigger money in letting prices run higher before producing more supply. They can get away with this because big oil and gas producers don’t operate in a competitive market. They can manipulate supply by coordinating among themselves.

Since the 1980s, two-thirds of all American industries have become more concentrated

In sum, inflation isn’t driving most of these price increases. Corporate power is driving them.

Since the 1980s, when the US government all but abandoned antitrust enforcement, two-thirds of all American industries have become more concentrated.

Monsanto now sets the prices for most of the nation’s seed corn.

The government green-lighted Wall Street’s consolidation into five giant banks, of which JP Morgan is the largest.

Airlines have merged from 12 in 1980 to four today, which now control 80% of domestic seating capacity.

Boeing and McDonnell Douglas have merged, leaving the US with just one large producer of civilian aircraft: Boeing.

Three giant cable companies dominate broadband: Comcast, AT&T and Verizon.

A handful of drug companies control the pharmaceutical industry: Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck.

All this spells corporate power to raise prices.

So what’s the appropriate response to the latest round of inflation?

The Federal Reserve has signaled it won’t raise interest rates for the time being, believing that the inflation is being driven by temporary supply bottlenecks.

Meanwhile, Biden administration officials have been consulting with the oil industry in an effort to stem rising gas prices, trying to make it simpler to issue commercial driver’s licenses (to help reduce the shortage of truck drivers), and seeking to unclog overcrowded container ports.

But none of this responds to the deeper structural issue – of which price inflation is a symptom: the increasing consolidation of the economy in a relative handful of big corporations with enough power to raise prices and increase profits.

This structural problem is amenable to only one thing: the aggressive use of antitrust law.

These are the Companies that received the benefit of the 2017 tax breaks that never reached the average taxpayers as promised by TOTUS MA

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FEBRUARY 14, 2020

William G. Gale

The Vitals

Before and after passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), several prominent conservatives, including Republicans in the House and Senate, former Reagan economist Art Laffer, and members of the Trump administration, claimed that the act would either increase revenues or at least pay for itself. In principle, a tax cut could “pay for itself” if it spurred substantial economic growth—if tax revenues rose from the combination of higher wages and hours worked, greater investment returns, and larger corporate profits. The TCJA, however, is not that tax cut.

• The actual amount of tax revenue collected in FY2018 was significantly lower than the CBO’s projection made in January 2017—before the tax cut was signed into law.
• Given that the economy grew in 2018, and in the absence of another policy that could have caused a large revenue loss, the data imply that the 2017 tax cut substantially reduced revenues.
• The 2017 tax cut reduced the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent—a 40 percent reduction. It also reduced income taxes for most Americans.

A Closer Look

Did the TCJA spur enough growth to maintain federal revenue levels?

While some TCJA supporters observe that nominal revenues were higher in fiscal year 2018 (which began Oct. 1, 2017) than in FY2017, that comparison does not address the question of the TCJA’s effects. Nominal revenues rise because of inflation and economic growth. Adjusted for inflation, total revenues fell from FY2017 to FY2018 (Figure 1). Adjusted for the size of the economy, they fell even more.

The right question: What would revenues have been without the TCJA?

The most appropriate test of the revenue impact of the TCJA is to compare actual revenues in FY2018 with predicted revenues in FY2018 assuming Congress had not passed the legislation. In fact, the actual amount of revenue collected in FY2018 was significantly lower than the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) projection of FY2018 revenue made in January 2017—before the tax cuts were signed into law in December 2017. The shortfall was $275 billion, or 7.6% of revenues that were expected before the tax cuts took place. Given that the economy grew, and in the absence of another policy that could have caused a large revenue loss, the data imply that the TCJA substantially reduced revenues (Figure 1).

What does the composition of the revenue shortfalls tell us about the effect of the TCJA?

The TCJA’s changes mostly affected the corporate and individual income taxes (Figure 2). The act reduced the top corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%—a 40% reduction. Actual corporate income tax revenue in FY2018 was $135 billion lower than CBO’s projection from 2017—almost exactly a 40% decline. The most recent CBO projections estimate further decreases in corporate tax revenue. The TCJA also reduced income taxes for most Americans, which led to a decline in revenues relative to prior projections. For individual income taxes, actual collections in FY2018 were $97 billion, or 5.4%, below pre-TCJA projections.

These effects are accentuated if one looks at taxes as a share of GDP (Table 1). In 2017, before the tax cuts were considered, the CBO estimated that total revenues would be 18.1% of GDP in FY2018. With the TCJA, revenues were only 16.4% of GDP. Similar patterns hold for individual income taxes and (in more extreme form) for corporate income taxes. Due to data limitations, the revenue numbers in Table 1 are on a fiscal year (October 2017–September 2018) basis. As a result, 2018 data include the three months prior to the act’s enactment. If the values were instead on a calendar year basis so that 2018 only included post-TCJA revenues, the revenue declines would be even larger.

Are the differences between projected and actual revenues really caused by the TCJA?

These shortfalls can’t be attributed to errors in the CBO’s pre-TCJA forecast. To illustrate this, it makes sense to look at projected and actual payroll tax revenues, because the TCJA did not directly affect payroll taxes. In fact, payroll taxes fell only slightly—1.7%—from pre-TCJA projected values (Figure 2). This provides baseline credibility that reinforces the declines in other revenues.

Were the TCJA’s revenue effects anticipated?

None of these findings should be surprising. Almost every major analysis of the legislation correctly predicted that revenues would fall in 2018 relative to a scenario without the tax cuts, with sources ranging from government entities such as the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation, to non-governmental think tanks such as the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and the Tax Foundation, academic researchers in studies by Robert Barro and Jason Furman, and in analyses using the Penn-Wharton Budget Model.

Could the revenue shortfalls be a temporary result of sudden policy change?

For those who might argue to “wait and see” what has happened in 2019, the findings from the studies cited above offer little hope. On average, these models estimated that economic growth effects (the “dynamic effects”) will only offset about a quarter of the 10-year revenue loss associated with the TCJA. Excluding the Tax Foundation, which is an outlier in these estimates, drops the average offset to less than 20%.

So did the TCJA pay for itself?

The TCJA did not pay for itself, nor is it likely to do so in the future. There are many debates to have about the TCJA, but whether it raised or reduced revenues in 2018 should not be one of them.

I thank Grace Enda and Claire Haldeman for outstanding research assistance.

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Misinformation is wasting your time | Mission Control Blog

NPR Illinois | 91.9 UIS | By Randy Eccles

Published November 4, 2021 at 1:02 PM CDT

Misinformation has cost us all a lot of time and is increasingly costing us more.

Two major issues, COVID-19 and climate change are being exacerbated by leaders and supporters who don’t have the facts to base their choices. In the case of climate change, this has led to continued failure to put in place transformative corrective measures. The current weather patterns, floods, and droughts aren’t cyclical. Trends show the changes are off the cyclical charts and in many cases more severe than scientists previously predicted. We’ve been transformative, but in the wrong direction. Human generated carbon levels were discussed over 15 years ago by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth. Positive actions have been taken, like raising Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, but frequently are weakened or diluted. Where one administration takes a hard-ish stand, the next reverses it. This can’t be done without political support of the voter. We have lost significant time when we could have been making progress. Some reports now have us running out of time. Others, say it’s already too late and we can only make defensive adjustments now.

How does this happen? Misinformation. At the most fundamental level, you and I are wasting valuable time because we are misinformed. Who has time to read every scientific report? To save time we depend on experts and journalists to impart the most important and urgent information to us. Misinformation isn’t old. Merriam-Webster sites the word’s first use in 1605. The handbills, postal messages, and word of mouth of the Hamiltonian era have evolved into social media’s immediate delivery to millions of readers. In the past, the news cycle provided some time for editing or digestion. Until cable news began its 24/7 broadcasting, you had a national evening newscast that had 23.5 hours to assess what changed since the last broadcast. Newspapers’ daily deadline would provide a day of deliberation before we received updates. Now; the infinite scroll, unfiltered sharing, and the device buzzing for our attention in our pockets and purses leaves little time for consideration.

Misinformation defeats us when we so casually share it. How do you make sure you have credible information? It takes some time, but is minimal compared to the lost opportunity costs burgeoning misinformation produces.

1. Limit social media – We’re discovering that social media companies in their pursuit of business success have been cavalier about the effects of their media. I recently took my first break since 2007 of a popular sharing app. I haven’t missed it. I do miss following a few people on it, but I reach out to them directly now. I have less anxiety as I’m exposed to fewer doomsday headlines that drive traffic. Instead of using social media as a newspaper replacement, I pick a couple credible news sites to review stories from. Their scrolls aren’t infinite and I have also recovered time.
2. Find reliable sources – Credible news sources make mistakes occasionally. When they do, they tell you and make corrections. Too much of the data we get these days are from unchecked sources. Who is the author? What else have they written? What is their background? Is this source striving to be a credible news provider or is it an opinion site using emotion to drive pageviews? I found two charts that helped me to understand whether an information source was biased, The Media Bias Chart from Ad Fontes Media and the All Sides Media Bias Chart. Neither are perfect but I find them a good tool to use in evaluating sources. In addition to the centrist, reliable sources, I like to include a couple of highly credible sources from the right and the left ends of the chart.
3. Own what you share – I imagine I’ll go back to a social media platform to share stories again. In the past, I’ve caught myself almost forwarding a story about a death that seemed current but was from 3 year earlier. When you do decide to share information, in addition to the source’s credibility, make sure you check its date and whether there have been any updates. Your likes and your shares are your personal brand.
4. Confirmation bias – one of the benefits of social media has been more posts on things I enjoy like kayaking or animation. In the realm of participating in our democracy, this ends up feeding us what we want to hear and in some cases what gets us angry enough to engage. It seems to be getting harder to find well thought-out ideas that don’t immediately get assigned to left or right. In fiction, the willful suspension of disbelief is required to enjoy a book where the character has super powers or where there is an alternate history. In our current climate of ideas, we need to suspend our positions and consider things that do not align with them. If the author is thoughtful and using facts, not misinformation, we may find a shorter route to solving some of the issues that face us.

Misinformation is definitely costing us money, but also an even more valuable resource – time. We are not coming together to solve issues in our society. When issues emerge or re-emerge as encapsulated by Black Lives Matter, they are taken seriously at the beginning, until partisan elements use misinformation and disinformation to freeze action.

It’s been a long two years of pandemic. The U.S. leads the world in COVID deaths. The past and current administrations did amazing work with the pharmaceutical industry to get vaccines to market quickly. Unfortunately, misinformation has led many to question becoming vaccinated. Dr. Ngozi Ezike said in the recent Community Health Roundtable that Illinois is near a 70% vaccination rate. The quicker the world reaches that rate the sooner pandemic measures will end and our economy can operate without restraint. Ezike went on to say many places, like countries in Africa, are below a 2% vaccination rate. COVID is likely to go on a lot longer as misinformation about the effectiveness of the vaccine and the need to get it to other countries confuses people’s resolve.

Although I’ve been vaccinated and received a booster, I am anxiously waiting for a children’s version of the vaccine to be approved so my 11-year-old can be a tweenager and be able to feel confident getting out in public.

Please use NPR Illinois or the credible media of your choice to inform your decisions and learn more how COVID and misinformation is impacting us at the next Community Health Roundtable, November 19, noon to 1 PM

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Heather Cox Richardson	Oct 26

“Caravans” of migrants to our southern border are once again headline news on the Fox News Channel, but while these anti-immigrant stories divert attention from news that those on the right would like to bury, as usual, they also establish a larger pattern. 

Whipping up fears of immigration is standard for authoritarians trying to convince followers to support the loss of civil liberties in order to promote law and order. One of those who rose to power with just such an argument is Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, a figure those on the right are championing these days. Fox News Channel Personality Tucker Carlson broadcast from Hungary appreciatively earlier this year, presenting Orbán’s government, which has systematically dismantled democracy, as enviable. The American Conservative Union is planning to have its 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Hungary, as well.

This backstory gave disturbing context to today’s news from the Government Accountability Office. The GAO is a government agency within the legislative branch (most of the ones you’re used to hearing about are in the executive branch) that audits, investigates, and issues reports for Congress. Known as the congressional watchdog, the GAO tries to cut through spin to do honest, thorough, and nonpartisan evaluations of government issues.

Today, the GAO reported that actions of the Trump administration had undermined U.S. goals in the Northern Triangle countries that are currently driving immigration to the southern border. Since 2008, the U.S. has funded development projects in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to promote economic development, provide security, and combat corruption. This investment was designed, in part, to slow the movement of immigrants escaping the violence and economic dislocation of the region to the U.S. border.  

In March 2019, the Trump administration abruptly halted promised money, and that freeze continued until June 2020. Today’s GAO report documented how that suspension hurt 92 of the 114 projects underway under the control of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and 65 of the 168 projects operating under the State Department.

Migration to the border soared, right before the 2020 election. 

While Trump Republicans were trying to convince white American voters that immigrants threatened them, another story today suggests the real goals of the Trump machine.

The Guardian revealed that several members of the secretive Council on National Policy (CNP) claim that they were the ones behind the 2017 tax cuts on corporations and wealthy Americans. Wealthy right-wing Christian activists organized the CNP in 1981 to push the country toward religious and libertarian policies.  

Also today, the Washington Post Magazine ran a long story about CNP, calling it “the most unusual, least understood conservative organization in the nation’s capital.” CNP is registered as a charity, but it is essentially a central planning center for right-wing activists across the country. Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow, Jr., explained how CNP members, who initially opposed Trump, swung behind him when he promised to combat abortion. 

Members of CNP are a who’s who of wealthy conservative or political figures, including Leonard Leo, a leading light of the Federalist Society, which advocates for a conservative judicial system; Steve Bannon, a key Trump adviser; David Bossie, who headed the group Citizens United and who was Trump’s deputy campaign manager; and Kellyanne Conway, a White House adviser. Their goal, they say, is to create a moral America. 

So, it appears, the fearmongering about immigrants helped to give power to a secret group of wealthy Americans who lobbied for huge tax cuts for the richest Americans.

The stories about CNP suggest its members have focused on keeping emotions high and Trump in power. The CNP was instrumental in opposing business closures and mask mandates to combat the coronavirus. A number of members, including Cleta Mitchell—the lawyer who was on the phone with Trump during his infamous call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, asking him to switch the state into the Trump column although Biden had won it—and Ginni Thomas, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, backed “Stop the Steal” efforts.

Their efforts, we have increasing evidence, were promoted by Facebook, the giant social media company. Starting last Friday, 17 different news outlets have been publishing the “Facebook Papers” based on internal company documents provided to Congress and the press by whistleblower Frances Haugen. The stories allege that Facebook prioritized profits over truth and safety, deliberately amplifying right-wing voices and dividing the country. 

Facebook denies the allegations. 

Reports of migrant caravans might well be attempts to divert attention from the service of the Republicans to the wealthy, as well as from the story of January 6, which is becoming clearer as information continues to come out. Today, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol interviewed Steve Bannon associate Dustin Stockton. Stockton was one of the organizers of the Women for America First rally on January 6 that got taken over by the unpermitted Stop the Steal rally which led to the attack on the Capitol. 

According to a piece by Joshua Kaplan and Joaquin Sapien in ProPublica last June, Stockton was so concerned about the Stop the Steal people that he urged Amy Kremer, another leader of the Women for America First rally, to contact her associate Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, in the days before January 6 to warn him things were getting out of hand. The committee has subpoenaed Kremer to testify on October 29. There are signs that Kremer or an associate might have been a source for yesterday’s Rolling Stone article, suggesting that someone from Women for America First is willing to cooperate with the committee.

The Rolling Stone article, which provided names of lawmakers allegedly involved in planning the January 6 rally, refocused attention on the fact that it was Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ) who was speaking at length as the mob broke into the building. His speech delayed the evacuation of the House chamber for 15 minutes, so that the House members were still present when the mob, including Ashli Babbitt, tried to get at them. A police officer shot and killed Babbitt as she broke through the doors. 

Last night’s Rolling Stone story also identified Republican Lauren Boebert (CO) as a participant in planning meetings for the events of January 6. Today she said in a carefully worded statement: “I had no role in the planning or execution of any event that took place at the Capitol or anywhere in Washington, DC on January 6.”

Today, once again, President Joe Biden refused to claim executive privilege to prevent the January 6 committee from seeing documents Trump wants to hide. 

Meanwhile, the Democrats in Congress continue to try to move the country forward, hammering out their infrastructure measure. They hope to have it finished before President Biden leaves for meetings with European leaders later this week.

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Notes:

https://www.salon.com/2021/10/14/cpac-set-to-stage-far-right-conference-in-hungary-as-prosecutors-zero-in/

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/01/15/fact-sheet-united-states-and-central-america-honoring-our-commitments

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/central-americas-turbulent-northern-triangle

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/09/17/761266169/trump-froze-aid-to-guatemala-now-programs-are-shutting-down

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-104366

https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration/usbp-sw-border-apprehensions-fy2019

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Jacob Jarvis  1 hr ago

Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and pointed towards the cost of equipment left behind in the hands of the Taliban.

The Claim

In an interview with Fox News‘ Sean Hannity on October 7, Trump criticized President Joe Biden‘s handling of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan.

At one point, Trump said: “We left $85 billion worth of equipment in the hands of the Taliban.”

Trump has made this claim previously, and in a statement on August 30 said: “Never in history has a withdrawal from war been handled so badly or incompetently as the Biden Administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

In addition to the obvious, ALL EQUIPMENT should be demanded to be immediately returned to the United States, and that includes every penny of the $85 billion dollars in cost.”

The Facts

The figure touted by Trump is near those which came from a July 30 report from by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).

This detailed that “as of June 30, 2021, the United States government had appropriated or otherwise made available approximately $144.98 billion in funds for reconstruction and related activities in Afghanistan since FY 2002.”

Breaking down these funds, it detailed “$88.61 billion for security (including $4.60 billion for counternarcotics initiatives).”

That figure, minus the counternarcotics initiatives funds, would be $84 billion for security.

It also detailed $82.9 billion appropriated for the Afghanistan Security Forces

Fund (ASFF) which provided funds to “train, equip, and provide related assistance to” the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF). Around $75 billion had been disbursed.

While those figures are around the $85 billion mark, the money was not spent on equipment alone. The SIGAR report says that between 2005 and the third quarter of 2021, $18.56 billion from the ASFF was spent on “equipment and transportation.”

A Government Accountability Office report from 2017 said around 29 percent of the funds allocated to the ASFF, since it was set up in 2005, were spent on equipment and transportation between 2005 and 2016.

Dan Grazier, a defense policy analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, previously told the Associated Press: “We did spend well over $80 billion in assistance to the Afghan security forces. But that’s not all equipment costs.”

Over time, some of the equipment bought might also have become obsolete, further reducing the value of what was left behind. Some unwanted gear has also been sold off as scrap.

While the amount may not be $85 billion, a U.S. defense official told the Associated Press in August that the Taliban’s “sudden accumulation of U.S.-supplied Afghan equipment is enormous.”

Newsweek has contacted SIGAR for comment on estimates of the amount of equipment left behind. The office of the former president has also been contacted for comment.

The Ruling

False.

FACT CHECK BY NEWSWEEK

While the U.S. did spend upwards of $80 billion on security and security forces in Afghanistan, this was not all on equipment.

The figure also covered costs such as training and other assistance. The number for equipment may indeed run into billions of dollars, but not $85 billion as Trump has suggested.

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Fact Check: Donald Trump’s Claim U.S. Left $85 Billion of Equipment With Taliban

Jacob Jarvis  1 hr ago

Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and pointed towards the cost of equipment left behind in the hands of the Taliban.

The Claim

In an interview with Fox News‘ Sean Hannity on October 7, Trump criticized President Joe Biden‘s handling of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan.

At one point, Trump said: “We left $85 billion worth of equipment in the hands of the Taliban.”

Trump has made this claim previously, and in a statement on August 30 said: “Never in history has a withdrawal from war been handled so badly or incompetently as the Biden Administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

In addition to the obvious, ALL EQUIPMENT should be demanded to be immediately returned to the United States, and that includes every penny of the $85 billion dollars in cost.”

The Facts

The figure touted by Trump is near those which came from a July 30 report from by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).

This detailed that “as of June 30, 2021, the United States government had appropriated or otherwise made available approximately $144.98 billion in funds for reconstruction and related activities in Afghanistan since FY 2002.”

Breaking down these funds, it detailed “$88.61 billion for security (including $4.60 billion for counternarcotics initiatives).”

That figure, minus the counternarcotics initiatives funds, would be $84 billion for security.

It also detailed $82.9 billion appropriated for the Afghanistan Security Forces

Fund (ASFF) which provided funds to “train, equip, and provide related assistance to” the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF). Around $75 billion had been disbursed.

While those figures are around the $85 billion mark, the money was not spent on equipment alone. The SIGAR report says that between 2005 and the third quarter of 2021, $18.56 billion from the ASFF was spent on “equipment and transportation.”

A Government Accountability Office report from 2017 said around 29 percent of the funds allocated to the ASFF, since it was set up in 2005, were spent on equipment and transportation between 2005 and 2016.

Dan Grazier, a defense policy analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, previously told the Associated Press: “We did spend well over $80 billion in assistance to the Afghan security forces. But that’s not all equipment costs.”

Over time, some of the equipment bought might also have become obsolete, further reducing the value of what was left behind. Some unwanted gear has also been sold off as scrap.

While the amount may not be $85 billion, a U.S. defense official told the Associated Press in August that the Taliban’s “sudden accumulation of U.S.-supplied Afghan equipment is enormous.”

Newsweek has contacted SIGAR for comment on estimates of the amount of equipment left behind. The office of the former president has also been contacted for comment.

The Ruling

False.

FACT CHECK BY NEWSWEEK

While the U.S. did spend upwards of $80 billion on security and security forces in Afghanistan, this was not all on equipment.

The figure also covered costs such as training and other assistance. The number for equipment may indeed run into billions of dollars, but not $85 billion as Trump has suggested.

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