Fact-checking Carneys first face-to-face meeting with Trump [Video]

Prime Minister Mark Carney met with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington on Tuesday in their first face-to-face meeting since Carney’s Liberal party won the most seats in the April 28 election.

Since returning to office in January, Trump has threatened and imposed broad-based tariffs and talked about wanting to make Canada a U.S. state.

While the two met with reporters at the White House, Trump made a few claims alongside his other comments. Here’s how some of them measure up:

———

“We have a tremendous deficit with Canada,” Trump said. “It’s hard to justify subsidizing Canada to the tune of maybe US$200 billion a year.”

A trade deficit — when one country exports less to a partner nation than the partner exports to it — is not a subsidy, any more than spending more at the grocery store than it spends on one customer would amount to a subsidy.

Even …