But blithering idiocy like the following has become so commonplace from Trump that it's apparently being taken for granted.

I look forward to meeting the new Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney. I very much want to work with him, but cannot understand one simple TRUTH – Why ismAmerica subsidizing Canada by $200 Billion Dollars a year, in addition to giving them FREE Military Protection, and many other things?"

"We don't need their Cars, we don't need their Energy, we don't need their Lumber, we don't need ANYTHING they have, other than their friendship, which hopefully we will always maintain.

They, on the other hand, need EVERYTHING from us!

While this is obviously pure gibberish in its own right, we can't even say that it was deliberate over-the-top bombast designed to warm-up his guest for a "full and frank exchange" in the Oval Office Tuesday afternoon. The chances are, in fact, that the Donald actually believes this stuff because his economic framework is an utterly primitive zero-sum construct in which all exchanges produce a "winner" and a "loser" and, furthermore, if his side is losing it's because the other side is comprised of nefarious cheaters and thieves.

Then again, in the case of Canada even the gross trade numbers do not bear him out— since the $200 billion subsidy number is purely from Mars. The actual US trade deficit with

Canada in 2024 was just $63.3 billion, if that's what he is referring to as the "subsidy", but even that doesn't mean all that much.

As it happened, two-way goods trade between our highly integrated economies was $762 billion ($412 billion of US imports and $350 billion of US exports), meaning that the residual balance in Canada's favor was a modest 8.3% of total turnover. Even then, two-way services trade between the two countries totaled $150 billion, wherein the $30 billion surplus in the US favor amounted to 20% of total turnover.