Donald Trump’s first presidential debate confirmed he has no idea what he’s talking about - Vox

Trump doesn’t know much about the economy

Trump explained that he talks about how rich he is “not in a braggadocious way” but because “it's time that this country has somebody running the country who has an idea about money.”

And yet from his very first statement in the debate, Trump revealed a frankly bizarre level of ignorance about economic policy.

• Literally the first thing Trump said after thanking the moderator was that “our jobs are fleeing the country” when, in fact, employment has been steadily increasing for years.
• Three sentences later, he said the Chinese “are devaluing their currency and there's nobody in our government to fight them,” when, in fact, the Chinese are trying to prop up the value of their currency in the face of a massive investor exodus from Chinese real estate.
• He also said the Chinese “are using our country as a piggy bank to rebuild China,” which isn’t even how piggy banks work, much less the US-Chinese economic relationship.
• He said that Mexico is feasting on American manufacturing and “building the bigger plants in the world” when, in fact, Tesla is currently building the biggest factory in the world right in California. The existing biggest factory in the world is also in the United States, and is where Boeing jumbo jets are built. No. 3 is a Mitsubishi plant located in Illinois.