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| Source:NBC News with a look at President Donald J. Trump (MAGA, Florida) 47th President of the United States & 1st wannabe dictator. |
From NBC News
From CTV News:
"U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration have made a variety of complaints about Canada to justify his plan to impose 25% tariffs on most imports from Canada (with 10% tariffs on energy imports) beginning on Tuesday.
Most frequently, Trump has cited the U.S. trade deficit with Canada, the trafficking of fentanyl from Canada to the U.S., illegal migration over the Canada-U.S. border, and Canada’s low level of defence spending.
Trump, however, has wildly exaggerated the size of that trade deficit. He hasn’t mentioned that Canada is responsible for a minuscule percentage of illegal fentanyl imports into the U.S. and a small percentage of U.S. encounters with migrants. And while Canada’s persistent failure to meet NATO defence spending guidelines has long been a bipartisan U.S. concern, Trump has sometimes overstated the extent of the problem.
Here is a fact check.
Just 0.2% of U.S. border fentanyl seizures are at the Canadian border
Trump has lumped together the Canadian border and the Mexican border when talking about illegal fentanyl imports. The day after his inauguration in January, for example, he said, “The fentanyl coming through Canada is massive. The fentanyl coming through Mexico is massive.”
But there is a massive difference between the extent of the problem at the two borders.
Federal statistics show U.S. border authorities seized 21,889 pounds of fentanyl in the 2024 fiscal year. Of that amount, 43 pounds were seized at the Canadian border — about 0.2% — compared with 21,148 pounds at the Mexican border, about 96.6%.
There’s no indication of any substantial change in the first three months of the 2025 fiscal year (October 2024 through December 2024). Of the 4,537 pounds of fentanyl seized by U.S. border authorities during that period, 10 pounds, about 0.2%, were seized at the Canadian border, while 4,409 pounds, about 97.2%, were seized at the Mexican border.
It is true that the quantity of fentanyl seized at the Canadian border increased in fiscal year 2024. Just 2 pounds were seized there in fiscal year 2023, and 14 pounds were seized in fiscal year 2022. And, of course, even tiny quantities of fentanyl can be fatal.
Still, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment report did not even use the word “Canada.” It mentioned Mexico 86 times...
From CTV News
I just want to correct something that NBC News anchor Ryan Nobles said, first and then I'll get into the bigger story here.
Ryan Nobles said: "Donald Trump likes to fashion himself as a great dealmaker. He even wrote a book about dealmaking called "The Art of The Deal".
It's actually Tony Schwartz who ghostwrote that book. You know when Donald Trump wrote something by looking at his personal social media accounts. That's the only time he ever writes anything on his own.
As my colleague Rik Schneider wrote about President Trump's tariffs on Friday:
"When you raise the costs of goods and doing business in America, the costs of those goods and business goes up. It doesn't get paid for by corporations or government's (domestic or foreign) but by the consumers themselves, because businesses just pass those new costs onto their consumers. We already saw the stock market take a big hit today even with the President's announcement of his tariffs that he's planning this weekend. Tariffs and tax hikes on goods and business simply makes those things more expensive in this country. Other terms for tariff are national sales tax, or national consumption tax.
And Charles Payne can talk all he wants about the "facts" that Americans will be paying less in taxation under President Trump, which would offset the tariffs. But according to Econo Fact, 60% of Americans only got 500 bucks back in tax relief under President Trump's 2017 tax cuts. So 10 bucks a week is supposed to pay for a 25% increase in food and milk? I don't think so. The wealthy won't be hurt by this, they may even like it. But the overwhelmingly majority of American voters are middle class Americans, who can't afford tax hikes right now. And putting tariffs on their goods and services, is giving them a 25% tax increase."
From The New Democrat
As my colleague Derik Schneider wrote about this today:
"President Trump's cave on the tariffs, is just like his his cave on the attempt to unilaterally freeze government spending last week. His got negative feedback from his own people and then he tried to spin it like it was some type of victory for him.
Imagine being the coach of a football team and you just lost a game 35-7, after you spent a week talking about how your team is going to beat the other team and the press is talking about how bad your team was beat and your answer is something like: "We didn't get shut out. We scored in that game. You thought we would get shut out".
This is what Donald Trump is like as President of the United States, he swings for the fences every time he tries to do anything. And when he misses badly, he tries claim victory by saying he did something that he had nothing to do with. He's like the amateur card player who goes to Las Vegas with his 10,000$ in savings on a Friday night, leaves on Sunday with 100 bucks left, claiming he just made a 100 bucks."
From The New Democrat
Sorry, but I don't give credit to people for:
Not jumping off the bridge.
Not breaking into my house.
Not hitting my car when they're parking.
I don't give cabbies a bigger tip from dropping me off at the right location.
When you almost create a trade war and you are just pausing that trade war, you don't deserve credit for almost blowing up your house, but putting pause on that. Perhaps you really want to look at the consequences of that. Will the insurance company be fooled. That sort of thing.
The CTV News piece is correct:America gets 0.2% of its fentanyl from Canada. So where is the victory here? How is Canada putting more of their own troops on their border with us, a victory for America? If anything, Canada with its unpopular and outgoing Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, caved. And Donald Trump takes a victory lap for not blowing up his own house.
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