Fact Check: Trump cannot stop lying about trade with Canada and Europe

The Greek Courier

Source: CNN

There may be an audience in the US that will believe anything Donald Trump says. Still, outside the American border, the 47th POTUS is seen as the epitome of a liar who repeats false claims about his allies. Take the US trade relationship with Canada and Europe. In his remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump delivered another smattering of misstatements and exaggerations about trade, tariffs, and economic policy.

CNN made a fact-check of some of his remarks.

Trade with the European Union

While speaking at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, Trump repeated false claims about the European Union. He said: “They don’t take our, essentially, don’t take our farm products, and they don’t take our cars.” 

This claim is not valid, says CNN. "It’s not true, “essentially” or otherwise, that the EU doesn’t buy US farm products. The US government says the EU bought $12.3 billion worth of US agricultural exports in the 2023 fiscal year, making it the fourth-largest export market for US agricultural and related products behind China, Mexico, and Canada. And while US automakers have often struggled to succeed in Europe, according to a December 2023 report from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, the EU is the second-largest market for US vehicle exports — importing 271,476 US vehicles in 2022, valued at nearly 9 billion euro. (Some of these are vehicles made by European automakers at plants in the US.)"

The US transaction deficit with Canada

Now let's come to Trump's claims about Canada. During the question-and-answer portion of the Thursday event in Davos, Trump falsely claimed that the US has a trade deficit with Canada of $200 billion or $250 billion, saying “it’s not fair” that the bilateral deficit should be this high. 

As CNN says, the truth is that the US goods and services trade deficit with Canada was about $40.6 billion in 2023, according to the US government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. Even if you only consider trade in goods and ignore the services trade at which the US excels, the US deficit with Canada was about $72.3 billion in 2023, the bureau reported, still far shy of Trump’s figure. 

Also, CNN notes that the deficit "is overwhelmingly caused by the US importing a large quantity of inexpensive Canadian oil, which helps keep American gas prices down. The US imported about 3.9 million barrels of Canadian crude oil per day on average in 2023. The heavy crude from the Alberta oil sands is in high demand by US refineries, mostly in the Midwest, that are designed to process heavy crude – into products like gasoline and diesel – rather than the lighter crude the US tends to extract domestically".

“If (hypothetically) Canadian oil were not available to the American refineries, many would struggle to find heavy crude elsewhere, and they might even stop operating. Maybe Donald Trump should start importing crude from Venezuela, which has been in the past a large producer of heavy crude; but, Venezuela’s oil industry is a shadow of its former self and the US cannot rely on its production. 

So, as CNN states, in fact, importing Canadian oil helps protect jobs in the US, while American refineries would rather buy Canadian heavy crude than the light sweet crude that is produced in Texas and Louisiana because it is cheaper.