Trump repeats false claim about Canada after admitting uncertainty over figure

Says U.S. has trade deficit with country

The New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump repeated on Thursday his false assertion that the United States runs a trade deficit with Canada, the morning after privately telling Republican donors that he had deliberately insisted on that claim in a meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada without knowing whether it was true.

Mr. Trump’s private admission to having a loose grasp of the facts and his public refusal to back down from the incorrect statement — the United States has an overall surplus in trade with Canada — were vivid illustrations of the president’s cavalier attitude about the truth, and a reminder of how that approach has taken hold at the White House.

While others might be mortified at being caught short, for Mr. Trump, the episode illustrated his skill at improvisation. Still, it was a rare admission that he will say things without knowing if they are true. And it raised concerns that the U.S. will trick its allies — and humiliate them for having fallen for the deception.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, on Thursday insisted the president was right, saying Mr. Trump had chosen his figures selectively in the conversation with Mr. Trudeau and in a subsequent Twitter post that repeated the claim. The president was referring only to the trade of goods, which ignores the larger trade surplus in services the United States exports to Canada, Ms. Sanders said.

And in a briefing with reporters, she acknowledged that Mr. Trump had fabricated an anecdote he told the donors about unfair trading practices — Japanese officials, he claimed, conduct a test on American cars by dropping a bowling ball on their hoods from 20 feet high, and those that dent are barred from being imported.

“Obviously, he’s joking about this particular test,” Ms. Sanders told reporters who confronted her about the veracity of the tale. “But it illustrates the creative ways some countries are able to keep American goods out of their markets.”

Her explanation came two weeks after Hope Hicks, the White House communications director, told lawmakers on Capitol Hill that she sometimes told white lies on behalf of Mr. Trump.

The latest instance of Mr. Trump bending the truth emerged after The Washington Post published an account of the president boasting about his disingenuous exchange with Mr. Trudeau at a fundraising dinner on Wednesday night in Missouri. On Thursday, the president refused to back down from the erroneous claim about the trade balance between the United States and Canada.

“We do have a Trade Deficit with Canada, as we do with almost all countries (some of them massive),” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. In an audio recording from the dinnerobtained by the Post, a transcript of which was published on Thursday, Mr. Trump recounted how he pressed that point in a meeting with Mr. Trudeau even though he had “no idea” whetherit was true.

“PM Justin Trudeau of Canada, a very good guy, doesn’t like saying that Canada has a Surplus vs. the U.S. (negotiating), but they do,” Mr. Trump added in his tweet.

The United States ran a trade surplus of $600 million in goods and services with Canada in January, according to the Commerce Department, a metric that reflects the difference between what the United States exports to Canada and what it imports from that country. In 2016, the United States had a trade surplus with Canada of $12.5 billion, according to a fact sheet posted on the website of the United States trade representative.