Trump defends making up trade claim in Trudeau talk

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday defended remarks he made to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the United States has a trade deficit with Canada, hours after audio surfaced of Trump telling campaign donors in Missouri that he “didn’t even know” if his assertions were true.

“We do have a Trade Deficit with Canada, as we do with almost all countries (some of them massive),” Trump tweeted Thursday morning. “P.M. 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 . . . they almost all do . . . and that’s how I know!”

Trump’s tweet runs counter to remarks he made at a closed-door Missouri GOP fundraiser on Wednesday evening in which he recounted a phone conversation with Trudeau, according to audio of the president’s speech obtained by The Washington Post.

“Trudeau came to see me. He’s a good guy, Justin. He said, ‘No, no, we have no trade deficit with you, we have none. Donald, please,’ ” Trump told event attendees. “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.

“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 . . . And I thought they were smart. I said, ‘You’re wrong, Justin.’

“He said, ‘Nope, we have no trade deficit.’ I said, ‘Well, in that case, I feel differently,’ I said, ‘but I don’t believe it.’ I sent one of our guys out, his guy, my guy, they went out, I said, ‘Check, because I can’t believe it.’ ”

Trump said one of his staffers returned and said: “ ‘Well, sir, you’re actually right. We have no deficit, but that doesn’t include energy and timber . . . And when you do, we lose $17 billion a year.’ It’s incredible.”

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The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative website indicates the United States in 2016 had a trade surplus with Canada of $12.5 billion, but White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders doubled down on Trump’s defense during Thursday’s daily press briefing, saying the president “didn’t have to look at the specific figures” to determine there is a deficit.

Sanders repeated Trump’s assertion that the current trade figures do not include energy and timber.

A spokesman for Canada’s foreign minister pushed back in a statement, saying, “Canada and the United States have a balanced and mutually beneficial trading relationship. According to their own statistics, the U.S. runs a trade surplus with Canada.”

Trump’s conversation with Trudeau was one of a series of calls the president has fielded from U.S. allies opposed to the president’s recently established tariffs on imported aluminum and steel.

In his announcement last week, Trump said Canada and Mexico would be excluded from the tariffs as the countries negotiate a new North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States.