WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday wholly misrepresented the U.S. record on international trade disputes, incorrectly accused House Democrats of denying him lawyers in impeachment proceedings and dismissed as a mysterious “rumor” his own statement from months ago about Britain’s health system.
Here’s a look at some of his statements from London, where’s he is attending a NATO meeting:
TRADE
TRUMP: “We won, in the World Trade Organization, we won seven and a half billion dollars. We never used to win before me, because, before me, the United States was a sucker for all of these different organizations.” — remarks with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
THE FACTS: He is wildly wrong to state that the U.S. never won victories in disputes taken to the trade organization before him.
The U.S. has always had a high success rate when it pursues cases against other countries at the WTO. In 2017, trade analyst Daniel Ikenson of the libertarian Cato Institute found that the U.S. won 91% of the cases it took to the Geneva-based trade monitor.
As Ikenson noted, countries bringing complaints to the organization tend to win because they don’t bother going to the WTO in the first place if they don’t have a strong case.
As for his claim that the U.S. “won” $7.5 billion from the WTO, that’s not quite right.
Trump was referring to a WTO decision in October siding with the U.S. on imposing tariffs on $7.5 billion worth of European imports annually. The value of the tariffs on those imports is much less than $7.5 billion.
The WTO announcement culminated a 15-year fight over EU subsidies for Airbus — a fight that began long before Trump was in office.
NeverthelessShePersisted
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