'Does not add up': Fact checker exposes Trump’s 'off-kilter' claim about Canada

14 March

Canada has long been a close ally and trading partner of the United States, but President Donald Trump's steep new tariffs are getting the U.S. into a major trade war with its neighbor to the north. And Trump's call for Canada, a fellow member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), to become "the 51st state" are only adding to tensions between two countries.

One of Trump's arguments for making Canada "the 51st state" is that the country is a drain on the U.S. economically. But the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler totally debunks that claim in a fact-check column published on March 14 — the same day Mark Carney is being sworn in as Canadian prime minister.

On March 13 — when he hosted NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, the Netherlands' former prime minister — Trump claimed, "We're spending $200 billion a year to subsidize Canada."

"Since becoming president again," Kessler notes, "Trump has claimed more than a half-dozen times that the United States provides a $200 billion annual 'subsidy' to Canada. 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."

According to Kessler, Trump's math "does not add up."

"We were curious about Trump's math about the alleged $200 billion subsidy," Kessler writes. "Trump has a habit of exaggerating trade deficits to justify tariffs, but the $200 billion figure is so off-kilter that we suspected Trump was counting something else. Indeed, a White House official said he was also counting military expenditures allegedly spent on behalf of Canada. So does this get Trump close to $200 billion?"

The answer to Kessler's question, he says, is a firm "no."

"In 2024, the deficit in trade in goods and services was about $45 billion," Kessler explains. "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."

The Post columnist continues, "As for military spending, Trump has long griped that Canada does not pull its weight in NATO. The military alliance in 2014 set a goal of members spending at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense spending, and Canada only achieved 1.37 percent in 2024…. That's $13 billion short of 2 percent."

Glenn Kessler's full Washington Post column is available at this link (subscription required)

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