Fact check: Trump exaggerates the trade deficit with China and Europe

Fact check: Trump exaggerates the trade deficit with China and Europe

In a conversation with journalists on Sunday, while he was on Air Force One, President Donald Trump renewed a series of false Assessments on tariffs and trade. As in the past, Trump was based on exaggerated information about the US trade deficit with China and spoke of a value that is more than three times as high than it is actually the case. He also repeated his frequent, false assertion that China actually paid the tariffs he raised on imported Chinese products during his first term; However, these payments were made by US importers. In addition, he once again expressed that the European continent “nothing” from the United States, which in reality does not apply: the European Union acquired in 2024 were worth around $ 649 billion from the USA.

The US trade deficit with China

Trump said on Sunday that the United States had a trade deficit with China of over $ 1 trillion. He noticed: "We have an enormous deficit problem with China. You have a surplus of at least one trillion dollar every year. I think it's about 1,001 trillion." However, these numbers are not correct. Official national statistics show that the trade deficit with China in 2024 was around $ 263 billion in goods and services. Even if you exclude the service sector, the deficit in goods trading is around $ 295 billion. In the past, the United States has never achieved a 1 billion US dollar trade deficit with China. The deficit in goods trading alone achieved a record of around $ 418 billion under Trump in 2018, but fell less than $ 400 billion in the following years.

Trump's tariffs on China

Trump repeated his usual claim that China had paid the tariffs he raised during his first term in Chinese imports, and wrongly explained: "I took hundreds of billions in China during my four years." In fact, it is US importers, non-foreign exporters such as China who pay customs fees to the US government. Numerous studies have shown that the costs for the tariffs from Trump's first term were mainly borne by the Americans. It is easy to find special examples of companies that have passed on the costs of the tariffs to US consumers.

trade in Europe

Trump expressed a number of false claims about trade in Europe, which were mostly repetitions of previous comments. He said on Sunday: "They don't take our cars. They don't take our food products. They don't take anything. And we take their cars: Mercedes, Volkswagen, BMW. They do not take cars. They do not take our agricultural products. They don't take anything." But this is anything but correct.

"You don't take anything" is far from the truth. While the European Union certainly has some commercial barriers that make it difficult to export US companies to export products there, official national statistics show that the United States was exporting around $ 649 billion to the European Union in 2024. The claim that "they do not take our agricultural products" is also wrong. The EU has some trading obstacles that make exports to American agricultural products, but the US Ministry of Agriculture reports that the EU acquired agricultural exports worth $ 12.8 billion from the USA and was thus the fourth largest export market for US agricultural products behind Mexico, Canada and China

Although US automotive manufacturers often have difficulty being successful in Europe, Trump exaggerates when he says: "You don't take cars." According to a report by the European automobile manufacturer association, in 2024 164.857 In the United States, cars made to the EU exported , which had a value of around $ 8.4 billion for current exchange rates. Some of these vehicles were produced by European automobile manufacturers in US works.