Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

Uranium Overreach

Trump repeated his misleading claim that Hillary Clinton “gave” Russia one-fifth of all U.S. uranium.

Trump: You know, they say I’m close to Russia. Hillary Clinton gave away 20 percent of the uranium in the United States. She’s close to Russia.

He’s wrong on several counts. The deal Clinton had a role in approving gave Russia ownership of 20 percent of U.S. production capacity — not existing stocks of uranium. Furthermore, Clinton alone could not have stopped the deal; only the president could have done that with a finding that national security would be endangered. Lastly, none of the uranium goes to Russia. That would require export licenses.

Trump was referring to Clinton’s role in the 2010 purchase by Russia’s nuclear agency of Uranium One, a Toronto-based company with mining operations in Kazakhstan, Tanzania and the United States, where the company’s operations amount to about 20 percent of annual U.S. production capacity.

The fact is — as we reported nearly two years ago — Clinton had no veto power to stop that deal. She was one of nine voting members on the foreign investments committee that unanimously approved it, a panel that also includes the secretaries of the treasury, defense, homeland security, commerce and energy, the attorney general, and representatives from two White House offices — the United States Trade Representative and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. (Separately, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission needed to approve (and did approve) the transfer of two uranium recovery licenses as part of the sale.)

Only the president could have stopped the sale, and only if at least one member of the foreign investment committee had objected. And even then, the president cannot prohibit a transaction without finding “credible evidence” that the “foreign interest exercising control might take action that threatens to impair the national security,” according to the federal regulation that governs such matters.

Finally, Russia may own the mines, but the uranium coming out of them stays in the U.S. As the Nuclear Regulatory Commission noted when it approved the sale, “no uranium produced at either facility may be exported.”

Trump made the same claim in slightly different words three times during his news conference. It’s a replay of a bogus accusation he made during last year’s campaign, when it was debunked by us and other independent fact-checking sites. But constant repetition doesn’t make a false statement true.

http://www.factcheck.org/2017/02/factchecking-trumps-news-conference/