On Dec. 18, 2024, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump wrote (archived) on his official Truth Social account that the United States subsidizes Canada "to the tune of over $100,000,000 a year."
Trump's post received more than 38,000 likes and was reported on by news outlets including Fox News, The Hill and the CBC. Some social media users repeated Trump's claim on X (archived).
Trump also claimed in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" in early December 2024 that "we're subsidizing Canada to the tune of over $100 billion a year," — 1,000 times the amount in his Truth Social post — which was amplified by social media users on Facebook (archived).
Trump's claims about subsidizing Canada with more than $100 million or $100 billion a year are false. According to the United States government's foreign assistance website, the U.S. has not spent more than $35.1 million in a single fiscal year on financial assistance for Canada since at least 2001. In the most recent reported fiscal year, 2022 — which ran from Oct. 1, 2021, to Sept. 30, 2022 — the United States sent $32 million in foreign assistance to Canada.
Some online users, aware that Trump was incorrect about American subsidies to Canada, speculated that the president-elect was conflating subsidies, a sum of money granted by a government or public body — usually through a cash payment or tax reduction — with a trade deficit, which refers to when the value of a country's imports is higher than the value of its exports.
Social media users made this assumption on on X (archived):
The United States' trade deficit with Canada for goods and services was $53.5 billion in 2022, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative. The U.S. goods deficit — not including services — was $80.1 billion that year, closer to the number in Trump's "Meet the Press" claim but still $20 billion short.