“Trudeau came to see me. He’s a good guy, Justin. He said, ‘No, no, we have no trade deficit with you, we have none. Donald, please,’” Trump said, mimicking Trudeau, according to audio obtained by The Washington Post. “Nice guy, good-looking guy, comes in — ‘Donald, we have no trade deficit.’ He’s very proud because everybody else, you know, we’re getting killed.”
CTV News criticized the Trump assertion that the U.S. runs a trade deficit with Canada — citing the 2018 White House “Economic Report of the President,” which has Trump’s signature, that reports that Canada is one of a few countries that the U.S. runs a trade surplus with.
“The United States ran a trade surplus of $2.6 billion with Canada on a balance-of-payments basis,” the document reads.
Trump said he asked an aide to check if he was correct in telling Trudeau the U.S. runs a trade deficit with Canada.
“I sent one of our guys out, his guy, my guy, they went out, I said, ‘Check, because I can’t believe it,'” Trump said.
“‘Well, sir, you’re actually right. We have no deficit, but that doesn’t include energy and timber… And when you do, we lose $17 billion a year.’ It’s incredible.”
This was another false assertion on Trump’s part because the surplus does include energy and timber.
Trump’s allegedly false assertion of the trade deficit and his knowingly making up the whole thing was made even worse when on Thursday morning, he took to Twitter to repeat his claim: “P.M. Justin Trudeau of Canada, a very good guy, doesn’t like saying that Canada has a Surplus vs. the U.S. (negotiating), but they do…they almost all do…and that’s how I know!” Trump tweeted.
Trump didn’t stop at just picking on Canada, something he has been doing with great regularity lately, but he also seemed to suggest he would pull U.S. troops stationed in South Korea if he didn’t get what he wanted on trade with Seoul, something that will up the stakes in trade talks with our ally.
“We have a very big trade deficit with them, and we protect them,” Trump said. “We lose money on trade, and we lose money on the military. We have right now 32,000 soldiers on the border between North and South Korea. Let’s see what happens.”
“Our allies care about themselves,” he said. “They don’t care about us.”
If Trump thought his speech was in a private setting, he made a huge mistake. He still hasn’t learned to use discretion when discussing politically volatile issues with his base in public settings. The thing is this — If he is fabricating lies to appease his base, why should anybody believe him?
