Days before he ordered, and then paused, new tariffs on U.S. imports from Canada and Mexico, President Donald Trump argued that the U.S. does not need imported products such as crude oil and lumber from those countries. Experts told us it’s not that simple.
In recent remarks to the press, President Donald Trump restated his intention to impose 25% tariffs on U.S. imports from Mexico and Canada as early as Feb. 1. His reasoning: “vast” illegal immigration and “massive” amounts of fentanyl coming to the U.S. from those countries. But Trump drew a false equivalence between the two countries. In fact, the magnitude of the difference is enormous.
Canada and Mexico have sent firefighting crews to help battle the blazes in the Los Angeles area, and Ukraine also has offered assistance. But social media posts misleadingly claim “$00,000,000” in “foreign aid” has been offered to the U.S. to help with the Southern California disaster.
Q: Are the viral photos of Mexican police being “brutalized” by Central American immigrants accurate?
A: No. Those images are old and unrelated to the group of immigrants seeking to come to the U.S.
President Donald Trump wrongly said that “nobody from this country knew” about Mexico’s value-added tax until after NAFTA was signed. A deputy U.S. trade representative at the time NAFTA was put in place said: “US policymakers, embassy officials and tax authorities were fully aware of Mexico’s VAT system.”
Making a pitch for border wall funding, President Donald Trump falsely tweeted that Mexico is “now rated the number one most dangerous country in the world.” That’s wrong.