In announcing a tentative agreement with Mexico, President Donald Trump called Mexico “a very large trading partner” and said negotiations would now begin with Canada, which he called a “smaller segment.” But U.S. trade with Canada was about $57 billion larger than trade with Mexico in 2017.
In this week’s fact-checking video, CNN’s Jake Tapper looks at two of President Donald Trump’s recent claims about trade.
In this fact-checking video, CNN’s Jake Tapper reviews President Donald Trump’s false claims about the impact of trade on U.S. farmers.
In recent tweets, President Donald Trump has made erroneous statements about U.S farmers, and soybean prices in particular, while complaining about trade barriers.
In a Fox Business interview, President Donald Trump singled out trade barriers as a reason for five “very bad years” for U.S. farmers. But agricultural economists blame low farm commodity prices — not trade barriers.
In this week’s video, CNN’s Jake Tapper reviews President Donald Trump’s claim that the U.S. trade deficit with Canada is “close to $100 billion a year.” It’s not.
The official U.S. statistics on trade with Canada show that the United States has a trade surplus with our neighbor to the north. The U.S. surplus was $2.8 billion in 2017, according to the Census Bureau. Yet, President Donald Trump has claimed that the U.S. has “close to $100 billion a year loss with Canada” or $17 billion “minimum.”
Three weeks after the Trump administration imposed a 30 percent tariff on imported solar energy cells and panels, the president claimed that “a lot of places are opening up” to “make solar panels again.” Two weeks later, he said that “we’re opening up at least five plants,” and by mid-April, the number had grown to “seven or eight.”
The United States had a trade surplus with China for passenger cars of $8.9 billion in 2017. Exports of cars to China totaled $10.5 billion, while imports from China were $1.6 billion. Yet President Donald Trump claimed that China “won’t take” U.S. cars.
This week, CNN’s Jake Tapper and FactCheck.org look at a claim that President Donald Trump has made more than once this month about U.S.-Canadian trade.