'The math does not add up': Fact checker finds Trump claim 'makes little sense'

A fact-checker found little evidence to support Donald Trump's claim about the U.S. subsidizing Canada to the tune of hundreds of billions.

The president attacked the nation's northern neighbor and fellow NATO ally during a visit Thursday with that treaty organization's secretary general Mark Rutte, as he wages economic war and even threatens to annex Canadian territory, and Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler pored over his claims.

"We’re spending $200 billion a year to subsidize Canada," Trump said, arguing that Canadians should agree to join the United States.

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"We don’t need their cars, we don’t need their energy, we don’t need their lumber," he added. "We don’t need anything that they give."

Kessler was suspicious of that figure, so he looked into where the president might have come up with it.

"Let’s start with the trade deficit," Kessler wrote. "As we often remind readers, it’s incorrect to claim that a trade deficit is a 'subsidy.' A trade deficit simply means that people in one country are buying more goods from another country than people in the second country are buying from the first country. Americans want to buy these products from overseas, either because of quality or price."

Trade-deficit numbers are influenced by a variety of factors, Kessler said, and even a booming economy and strong currency can be at fault because that means consumers have more money and buying power to purchase goods from overseas, but the fact-checker decided to look at the U.S. trade deficit with Canada just for the sake of argument and found it was one of the smallest despite being its second-biggest trading partner.

"In 2024, the deficit in trade in goods and services was about $45 billion," Kessler wrote. "The deficit in goods — which is what Trump concentrates on — was about $63 billion, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. A trade surplus in services, mainly Canadians flowing over the U.S. border for tourism and education, helped close the gap — but that surplus may fall this year because Canadians are so angry at Trump that they are canceling trips across the border."

"So the trade deficit only gets Trump about one-quarter of his $200 billion," he added.

Trump frequently complains that Canada isn't paying its share on NATO, which set a goal in 2014 of members spending at least 2 percent of their GDP on defense, but Canada managed only 1.37 percent last year.

"Canada’s GDP in 2024 was $2.12 trillion," Kessler found. "That’s $13 billion short of 2 percent. The White House official suggested that Canada should match the 3.4 percent of GDP spent by the United States, which would mean Canada theoretically is short $43 billion. But we also cannot forget that the United States is significantly larger than Canada in population and economic might."

That's still not a subsidy, Kessler said, and that still leaves him far short of of that $200 billion figure.

"Since becoming president again, Trump has claimed more than a half-dozen times that the United States provides a $200 billion annual 'subsidy' to Canada," Kessler wrote. "Never mind that a trade deficit is not a subsidy. Even if one includes various buckets of military spending, we can’t figure out how Trump calculated this figure. The White House offered some suggestions, but the math still does not add up."

"Until the White House can provide a more precise accounting, Trump earns Four Pinocchios," he added. "We suspect, for marketing purposes, he just liked a nice round number, and that’s the source of $200 billion."