Factcheck.org: Errors en Español
Summary
McCain's new radio ad, in Spanish, aims to show Florida would benefit from the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, which he supports. But every number in the ad is wrong, except one, a prediction of job gains taken from a group favoring the trade deal. And even that number is rounded upward so generously as to flunk third-grade arithmetic.
Analysis
Sen. John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee for president, is a longtime advocate of free trade. He promoted the Colombia Free Trade Agreement and free trade in general during his visits to Colombia and Mexico last week. His campaign announced the release of a Spanish-language radio ad targeting voters in Florida on July 2. Narrated by Tony Villamil, the state's ex-director of tourism, commerce and economic affairs, the ad uses statistics to argue that the pending trade agreement is crucial to Florida's economy.
The false figures begin with the ad's claim that "three-quarters of Florida's exports are with Latin America." That's wrong. According to the trade statistics generator from the U.S. Department of Commerce, all of Florida's international exports totaled close to $45 billion dollars in 2007, and the state's exports to Latin America AND the Caribbean last year equaled nearly $24 billion. That means 53 percent of Florida's exports go to the region, much closer to half than three-quarters. Exports to Latin America by itself would be even smaller.
This also means the ad's assertion that "last year, Florida's exports to Latin America reached almost 45 billion dollars" is false. As we just pointed out, that was the figure for the state's exports to all countries, not just Latin America.
Finally, the ad trips up when it claims: "Colombia is Florida's third most important export market." While we don't know how to measure the "importance" of a market, we can quantify the dollar value of exports sent to each. And by that metric, Colombia ranks fifth – not third – in Florida exports, according to figures from the Commerce Department, as well as from the Census Bureau. But McCain should know this already, because he said it himself on May 20, in an article he wrote for Miami's Latin Business Chronicle.
McCain, Latin Business Chronicle, May 20, 2008: Colombia today stands as Florida's fifth largest export market – Florida exported $2.1 billion worth of goods there last year – and now the Colombians are offering to drop their barriers to American goods.
We contacted the McCain campaign repeatedly about the figures used in the ad but received no answer as to where the campaign's numbers came from and why they differed so much from the Commerce Department's statistics. We also called Florida's Department of Finance, but a spokeswoman there could only point us to federal agencies for numbers on trade.
The campaign did give us support for one claim in the ad, a line saying that "this trade agreement would create almost 5,000 new jobs." That prediction, however, comes from a group promoting the agreement, and it doesn't really support what the ad says. Enterprise Florida, a nonprofit partnership between business leaders and state government that promotes economic development in the state, estimated in 2006 that a trade agreement with Colombia could lead to an "additional 4,483 jobs" in the state. That's actually closer to 4,000 jobs than to 5,000. Even the 4,483 figure is suspect. For one thing, it is an estimate only of jobs gained from increased exports, without any offset for jobs possibly lost. Furthermore, a more recent report from the International Trade Commission found that the trade agreement was likely to have "minimal to no effect on output or employment for most sectors in the U.S. economy."
We take no stance on the trade agreement itself. But voters should not be misled by the fanciful figures and bad math in this ad.
Republished with permission from factcheck.org.
