Trump tells crowd about disagreement with Trudeau

U.S. President Donald Trump regaled a rally of supporters Friday night with a story about a disagreement with Canada’s prime minister, then sprinkled his tale with some questionable statistics about international trade.

Trump told a partisan crowd in Florida that he and Justin Trudeau had a closed-door debate about trade balances.

He described it during the part of his speech where he blasted bad trade deals as one of the reasons he won last year’s election, and reiterated his promise to either cancel or renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

He lamented a $71 billion trade deficit with Mexico, then added that there’s also a deficit with Canada. That’s where he described his exchange with Trudeau.

“I like the prime minister very much. Prime Minister Trudeau. Nice guy. Good guy. No, I like him. But we had a meeting... He said, ‘No, no, you have a trade surplus.’ I said, ‘No we don’t.’ He said, ‘No, no you have a trade surplus,”’ Trump told the Florida crowd.

Statistics from the website of the office of the U.S. Trade Representative — the very office handling NAFTA negotiations — paint a portrait opposite to Trump’s.

It says, of last year’s trade balance: “The U.S. goods and services trade surplus with Canada was US$12.5 billion in 2016.”

That reflects a large surplus in trade in services of $24.6 billion, mitigated by a deficit in goods of $12.1 billion.