By Daniel Dale, CNN
Washington (CNN) — President Donald Trump has been making false claims about Canada for months. He did it again in the days leading up to his scheduled Tuesday meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney.
In an interview that aired Sunday on NBC, Trump made Canada’s military spending sound much smaller than it is and made the US trade deficit with Canada sound much bigger than it is. And in a late-April interview with The Atlantic, he exaggerated the extent of Canada’s trade reliance on the US.
Here is a fact check of these claims – and a bunch of others Trump has made about Canada this year.
Trump, who has spoken repeatedly of his desire to somehow turn Canada into the 51st US state, said in the NBC interview: “And by the way, Canada, they spend less money on military than practically any nation in the world. They pay NATO less than any nation.”
Facts First: It’s not true that Canada is the lowest military spender in NATO or “practically” the world’s lowest military spender. Official NATO estimates show that, of the 31 alliance members with a standing army, Canada had the eighth-highest defense spending in absolute terms in 2024; it had the fifth-lowest defense spending as a percentage of gross domestic product – low, but not lower “than any nation.” The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks global military spending, reported that Canada was the world’s 16th-highest 2024 military spender in absolute...
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