President Donald Trump repeated another series of false claims about Canada as his escalating trade war with the United States’ northern neighbor erupted again this week, according to a brutal CNN fact-check.
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CNN’s Daniel Dale examined two social media posts Trump published Monday, beginning with the president’s claim that “Canada’s Unemployment Rate is now at 10%, and rapidly rising.”
“This is wrong on both counts,” Dale wrote Tuesday.
“Canada’s unemployment rate declined to 6.4% in July. That was the third consecutive month it had gone down,” Dale told readers. “It was also a two-year low.”
The rate would be approximately one percentage point lower if Canada calculated unemployment using the same methodology as the United States, Dale noted. The U.S. unemployment rate was 4.1% in July.
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Trump’s claim that Canada conducts “95% of their business with the U.S” also came under the microscope.
“There’s no doubt that the Canadian economy is heavily reliant on the US, but there’s no apparent basis for Trump’s ‘95%’ figure,” Dale found. According to his report, approximately 72% of Canadian merchandise exports went to the United States in 2025, down from roughly 76% the previous year and the lowest percentage since the early 1980s.
“And the figure fell below 70% in the first half of 2026,” Dale added.
While Dale acknowledged that the United States is less dependent on Canada than Canada is on the U.S., he stressed that Canada remains a critical trading partner, particularly for northern border states.
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