President Donald Trump made a series of false claims in televised remarks Thursday at a meeting of his Cabinet, including inaccurate assertions about US relations with China, Japan and the European Union.
Here is a fact check of some of his remarks, most of which CNN has debunked before.
The US trade deficit with China: Trump repeated his false claim that “China has a surplus of $1 trillion” with the US on trade. That is not close to accurate. In fact, official federal statistics show the US trade deficit with China in goods and services trade was about $263 billion in 2024. Even if you exclude the services trade, at which the US excels, and count only trade in goods, the 2024 deficit with China was about $295 billion.
global prison population increased from October 2021 to April 2024, from about 10.77 million people to about 10.99 million people, according to the World Prison Population List compiled by experts in the United Kingdom.
“I do a daily news search to see what’s going on in prisons around the world and have seen absolutely no evidence that any country is emptying its prisons and sending them all to the US,” Helen Fair, co-author of the prison population list and research fellow at the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research at Birkbeck, University of London, said in June 2024, when Trump made a similar claim.
The border wall: Trump repeated his false claim that he had “571 miles of border wall” built on the southern border “in the first administration.” That’s a significant exaggeration; official government data shows 458 miles were built during Trump’s first term — including both wall built where no barriers had existed before and wall built to replace previous barriers.
------ Post added on Apr 11, 2025 at 2:40 AM
Here is a fact check of some of his remarks, most of which CNN has debunked before.
The US trade deficit with China: Trump repeated his false claim that “China has a surplus of $1 trillion” with the US on trade. That is not close to accurate. In fact, official federal statistics show the US trade deficit with China in goods and services trade was about $263 billion in 2024. Even if you exclude the services trade, at which the US excels, and count only trade in goods, the 2024 deficit with China was about $295 billion.
global prison population increased from October 2021 to April 2024, from about 10.77 million people to about 10.99 million people, according to the World Prison Population List compiled by experts in the United Kingdom.
“I do a daily news search to see what’s going on in prisons around the world and have seen absolutely no evidence that any country is emptying its prisons and sending them all to the US,” Helen Fair, co-author of the prison population list and research fellow at the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research at Birkbeck, University of London, said in June 2024, when Trump made a similar claim.
The border wall: Trump repeated his false claim that he had “571 miles of border wall” built on the southern border “in the first administration.” That’s a significant exaggeration; official government data shows 458 miles were built during Trump’s first term — including both wall built where no barriers had existed before and wall built to replace previous barriers.
------ Post added on Apr 11, 2025 at 2:40 AM
