CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale made clear Tuesday morning that President Donald Trump is “wildly overstating” when he bashes Canada.
The comments came ahead of Trump’s meeting Tuesday with the new Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney.
Dale took aim at the president's claim that Canada imposes high tariffs on its neighbor.
“The facts are that Canada is a low-tariff country,” Dale said. “The last international data we have from 2022, the World Bank published that Canada was 102nd on a list of 137 countries for average tariffs. It had lower average tariffs than the United States.”
He noted Trump’s claims about Canada's agricultural tariffs are also false. “[Trump] does not mention that those high dairy tariffs only kick in after a certain quantity of tariff-free U.S. exports to Canada, a certain quantity negotiated in his own USMCA are hit, and that the U.S. is not even close to hitting those maximum quantities,” Dale said.
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“[Trump] also does not mention that the U.S. Department of Agriculture itself says on its website that almost all U.S. agricultural exports to Canada are tariff-free and barrier-free. So the milk stuff, the dairy stuff that exists, but again, there are exemptions. And number two, those are the exception, not the rule.”
He later went on to criticize Trump’s claim that the United States has a massive trade deficit with its neighbor to the north. “[Trump] says the number 200 billion, almost every time he talks about Canada, it is wildly overstated,” Dale said. “So the United States' goods and services trade deficit with Canada in 2024 was under 40 billion.”
Dale shortly after corrected himself, “It's almost about 36 billion, I'm sorry. So he's multiplying it several times. Now, if you only talk about trade in goods and ignore the services trade at which the United States excels, he's still grossly exaggerating it.”
Watch the video below or at this link.