President Donald Trump‘s leaked remarks from a private fundraiser have provoked a rebuke from Canada, disputing the president’s claim that the U.S. has a trade deficit with its northern neighbor.
But Trump and the White House Thursday insisted he’s right.
“Canada and the United States have a balanced and mutually beneficial trading relationship,” Canada’s ministry of foreign affairs said in a statement to reporters. “According to their own statistics, the U.S. runs a trade surplus with Canada.”
The Canadian statement comes after audio surfaced of remarks Trump made at a Wednesday fundraiser in St. Louis, obtained by the Washington Post, in which Trump recounted a conversation with Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
According to a Post transcript, Trump joked that he repeatedly disputed Trudeau’s assertion that the U.S. does not have a trade deficit with Canada even though he, Trump, didn’t know whether his claim was true.
“Nice guy, good-looking guy, comes in — ‘Donald, we have no trade deficit.’ He’s very proud because everybody else, you know, we’re getting killed,” Trump said. “So, he’s proud. I said, ‘Wrong, Justin, you do.’ I didn’t even know. … I had no idea. I just said, ‘You’re wrong.’ You know why? Because we’re so stupid.”
A Republican source who attended the fundraiser confirmed the authenticity of the Washington Post’s account to ABC News, and the president himself tweeted in reaction to the story Thursday morning.
We do have a Trade Deficit with Canada, as we do with almost all countries (some of them massive). P.M….
