In a press conference in the Rose Garden of the White House on April 2, US President Donald Trump announced a new round of global tariffs. His statements on the tariffs’ calculations, justifications and effects, however, were filled with false claims. And they put many economies in a bind. Some countries have already announced countermeasures.
DW fact-checked two viral claims by Trump.
Claim: In a video, attached in this post on X, with 1.1 million views at the time of writing, Trump states that “Canada by the way imposes a 250-300% tariff on many of our dairy products, the first can of milk, the first little carton of milk, very low price, after that, it gets bad.”
DW Fact check: False
The tariffs Canada imposes on US dairy products are arranged in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). It applies to 14 categories of dairy products, such as milk, butter, cheese, yogurt, and ice cream.
As agreed in the USMCA, a certain number of US dairy products is allowed to enter the Canadian market tariff-free. When this limit is reached, other tariff calculations kick in to protect domestic producers. These over-quota tariffs are between 200 and 300%. However, according to the USMCA, Canada has guaranteed that tens of thousands of metric tons of imported US milk per year will face zero tariffs.
In a video on X, Trump made false claims about Canadian tariffs on US dairy productsImage: X How likely is it that the US must pay these high over-quota tariffs? US-based news outlet Bloomberg wrote that in practice 99,9% of US dairy products enter Canada tariff-free. The over-quota rates for US imports to Canada are not close to being reached in many of the categories — including milk.
Even the senior vice president of trade and workforce policy at the International Dairy Food Association (IDFA), stated that the US has “never gotten close to exceeding our USMCA quotas.”
Though these high over-quota tariffs are unlikely to be implemented, it is typical for over-quota tariffs to be high in general. The US itself also has a similar system of high over-quota tariffs on importing dairy products.
In the speech, Trump also repeated his frequent false claim that, because of the tariffs he imposed on China during his first term, the US “took in hundreds of billions of dollars.” While foreign companies may feel the impact of tariffs indirectly, through reduced sales or the need to lower prices to remain competitive, the actual payment of the tariff is made by the importing businesses, which could be American, as DW Fact check explained in a previous article.
But these weren’t the only false claims US President Trump made about tariffs and trade.
Claim: In this post on his own social media platform Truth Social, Trump shared the same chart he had shown at the press conference at the White House when he announced the “reciprocal” global tariffs. According to Trump, the chart shows a breakdown of the tariffs other countries charge the US and the corresponding tariff that the US will now impose against those countries. He claimed the European Union, shown at the second position, charges 39% tariffs on imports from the US.
DW Fact check: False
By claiming that the EU charges the US 39% tariffs, Trump justified a customized “reciprocal” tariff of 20% on the EU. This should go into effect on April 9. Trump explained this step in his April 2 speech: “Reciprocal. That means they do it to us and we do it to them… Very simple. Can’t get any simpler than that.”
Trump said the US would charge countries half of what they are charging the US. So, as the chart indicates, in the case of the EU, the “USA Discounted Reciprocal Tariffs” is 20%.
However, according to the World Trade Organisation, the EU’s trade-weighted average tariff rate is 2.7%. The highest average tariff rate that the European Union charges some countries is 30% on dairy products.
A fact sheet from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative explains that the reciprocal tariffs were determined to balance trade deficits between the U.S. and its trading partners. According to the document, reciprocal tariffs were “calculated as the tariff rate necessary to balance bilateral trade deficits between the U.S. and each of our trading partners. This calculation assumes that persistent trade deficits are due to a combination of tariff and non-tariff factors that prevent trade from balancing. Tariffs work through direct reductions of imports.”
Lesotho: Trump tariffs ‘not based on facts’To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
Hauwau Samaila Mohammed contributed to this article.
Edited by: Rachel Baig