“You saw trade deficits went down last month and everyone’s trying to figure out why. Well, we’re taking a lot of tariff money. And it has reduced the trade deficit.”
— President Trump, remarks in Hanoi, Feb. 28
The president really, really, really wants trade deficits to decline. But reality keeps biting.
During his news conference in Hanoi after the collapse of summit talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump made the observation above. It reminded us of the time in mid-2018 when he repeatedly claimed the quarterly trade deficit had declined $52 billion and complained that “nobody reports it.”
Well, that’s because it was not true. He stopped making that claim after our fact check appeared.
But now he highlights a one-month decline in the trade deficit — and says it’s because “we’re taking in a lot of tariff money.”
View the complete March 1 article by Glenn Kessler on The Washington Post website here.