Donald Trump doesn’t just have differences in policy with Canada.According to Daniel Dale, CNN’s main fact-checker, who is Canadian, Trump has based his whole trade war story on clearly false claims — and the lies are still coming.
Just today, Dale showed that Trump wrongly said Canada’s unemployment rate is “10% and going up fast.” The real number is 6.4%, and it has been falling for three months in a row.
Trump also said Canada does “95% of its business with the US.” The real number is 72%.
He blamed the US-Canada trade gap on high Canadian agricultural tariffs, even though most US agricultural exports to Canada are already tariff-free.
The actual trade gap is mainly due to cheap Canadian oil imports, which help American consumers.
That’s just what happened today.
Dale’s record over the past 18 months looks like a list of made-up stories.
Trump falsely said Canada doesn’t buy American farm products, but Canada is actually the second-biggest buyer of them.
He also said Canadians support making Canada the 51st US state, but polls show most people disagree.
He claimed Canada is one of the world’s highest-tariff countries, but World Trade Organization rankings put it near the bottom.
He also said Canada “basically has no military,” ignoring that Canadian forces have fought with US troops in several wars and are among the strongest in NATO.
He also exaggerated the US trade deficit with Canada to “$200 billion” (which is not true), falsely claimed Canada bans American banks (over a dozen are actually operating there), falsely said Canada is “constantly surrounded” by Chinese and Russian ships (which isn’t real), and falsely accused former Prime Minister Trudeau of using trade tensions to run for reelection — even though Trudeau wasn’t running.
This isn’t just policy disagreement.
It’s a dispute over what’s true.
It’s a sitting president creating an entire economic conflict with one of America’s closest allies by making up numbers, again and again, for nearly two years, with almost no correction or accountability.
When the facts don’t support his trade war, apparently the fix is to just make up new facts.
Someone needs to tell Trump that the world doesn’t work that way, and that someone might as well be CNN’s Daniel Dale.
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