This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Washington • A claim from the second presidential debate and how it stacks up with the facts:
Donald Trump: "Hillary Clinton wants to put all the miners out of business. ... The [Environmental Protection Agency] is putting our energy companies out of business."
The facts: Coal companies have been battered by the rise of natural gas production more than by Obama administration regulations — although those have not helped.
A string of major coal companies has filed for bankruptcy in recent years, and layoffs and cutbacks have spread economic suffering through coal country. But despite Trump's claims about energy companies going out of business, these are boom times for natural gas extraction, mostly due to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
As for Clinton, she has said that a shift away from coal and fossil fuels is putting miners out of business, though Trump and others have sought to construe her words to mean she herself wants to put miners out of business. In fact, she argues she has a policy to try to put out-of-work miners back to work and bring economic opportunity back into coal country.