Fact check: Canada makes up just 0.2% of U.S. border fentanyl seizures

Donald Trump says it is 'very tough' to do business with Canada, and the U.S. doesn't need them for cars or lumber.

U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration have made a variety of complaints about Canada to justify his plan to impose 25% tariffs on most imports from Canada (with 10% tariffs on energy imports) beginning on Tuesday.

Most frequently, Trump has cited the U.S. trade deficit with Canada, the trafficking of fentanyl from Canada to the U.S., illegal migration over the Canada-U.S. border, and Canada’s low level of defence spending.

Trump, however, has wildly exaggerated the size of that trade deficit. He hasn’t mentioned that Canada is responsible for a minuscule percentage of illegal fentanyl imports into the U.S. and a small percentage of U.S. encounters with migrants. And while Canada’s persistent failure to meet NATO defence spending guidelines has long been a bipartisan U.S. concern, Trump has sometimes overstated the extent of the problem.

Here is a fact check.

Just 0.2% of U.S. border fentanyl seizures are at the Canadian border

Trump has lumped together the Canadian border and the Mexican border when talking about illegal fentanyl imports. The day after his inauguration in January, for example, he said, “The fentanyl coming through Canada is massive. The fentanyl coming through Mexico is massive.”

But there is a massive difference between the extent of the problem at the two borders.

Federal statistics show U.S. border authorities seized 21,889 pounds of fentanyl in the 2024 fiscal year. Of that amount, 43 pounds were seized at the Canadian border — about 0.2% — compared with 21,148 pounds at the Mexican border, about 96.6%.

There’s no indication of any substantial change in the first three months of the 2025 fiscal year (October 2024 through December 2024). Of the 4,537 pounds of fentanyl seized by U.S. border authorities during that period, 10 pounds, about 0.2%, were seized at the Canadian border, while 4,409 pounds, about 97.2%, were seized at the Mexican border.

It is true that the quantity of fentanyl seized at the Canadian border increased in fiscal year 2024. Just 2 pounds were seized there in fiscal year 2023, and 14 pounds were seized in fiscal year 2022. And, of course, even tiny quantities of fentanyl can be fatal.

Still, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment report did not even use the word “Canada.” It mentioned Mexico 86 times.

As The New York Times reported last week, the bipartisan congressional Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking said in a 2022 report that, based primarily on data on seizures, “Canada is not known to be a major source of fentanyl, other synthetic opioids or precursor chemicals to the United States.” While the report warned that “Canadian criminal groups have the equipment, facilities, and expertise to increase the supply of illegally manufactured fentanyl,” it also said that “illegal operators in that country so far do not appear to be exporting large quantities of bulk fentanyl or counterfeit tablets, unlike Mexico as evidenced by seizures.”

Aaron McCrorie, vice president of intelligence and enforcement at Canada’s border agency, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. in December 2024: “As a source of fentanyl to the United States: It is dynamic, and things are always changing, but our assessment right now is that we’re not, in any way, a significant source of fentanyl going to the United States.” McCrorie said that, as shown by Drug Enforcement Administration reports, “it’s clear that the vast, vast majority of fentanyl going to the United States is coming from Mexico.”

In response to Trump’s concerns, the Canadian government announced a variety of measures in December to try to combat drug trafficking into the U.S., including more funding for technological detection tools and dog teams.

Canada makes up 1.5% of border patrol encounters with migrants

Trump has also declined to distinguish the Canadian border from the Mexican border on the subject of migration. At the same event the day after his inauguration, he said, “They’ve allowed — both of them, Canada very much so — they’ve allowed millions and millions of people to come into our country that shouldn’t be here. They could have stopped them, and they didn’t.”

The Canadian border, however, is the site of far fewer crossings than the Mexican border even after a Biden-era spike in crossings from the north.

In fiscal year 2024, there were about 2.9 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants by U.S. border authorities. Of those, 198,929 encounters — about 6.9% — were at the Canadian border. And of the approximately 1.6 million U.S. Border Patrol encounters with migrants at places other than legal ports of entry, just 23,721, or about 1.5%, were at the northern border.

There was a significant jump during the Biden administration in the number of migrants attempting to cross into the U.S. from Canada, both at legal ports and in between those ports. The number of encounters between northern ports was just 2,238 in fiscal year 2022, so the 2024 number, 23,721, is more than 10 times the number just two years prior.

The increase has been driven by a surge in the number of migrants from distant countries, notably including India, who fly to Canada and then try to cross to the U.S..

The U.S. trade deficit with Canada is much lower than Trump has claimed

Trump has repeatedly inflated the size of the U.S. trade deficit with Canada. He said Friday, as he has before, that “we have about a $200 billion deficit with Canada — getting close to $200 billion.”

He qualified the claim that time, with the words “about” and “getting close to,” but it still wasn’t even close to correct.

The U.S. goods and services trade deficit with Canada was about $40.6 billion in 2023, the last year for which full data is available, according to the U.S. government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. Even if you only consider trade in goods and ignore the services trade at which the U.S. excels, the U.S. deficit with Canada was about $72.3 billion in 2023, still far shy of Trump’s regular “$200 billion” figure.

And it’s worth noting the deficit is overwhelmingly caused by the U.S. importing a large quantity of inexpensive Canadian oil — about 3.9 million barrels of crude oil per day on average in 2023 — which helps keep Americans’ gas prices down.

Trump has argued that “we don’t need anything” from Canada, but heavy crude from the Alberta oil sands is in high demand by U.S. refineries, mostly in the Midwest, that are designed to process heavy crude into products like gasoline and diesel, rather than the lighter crude the U.S. tends to extract domestically.

“If (hypothetically) Canadian oil were not available, many U.S. refineries would struggle to find heavy crude elsewhere, and they might even stop operating in such a scenario. Historically, Venezuela had been a large producer of heavy crude, but Venezuela’s oil industry is a shadow of its former self,” said Pavel Molchanov, an energy expert who is an investment strategy analyst at Raymond James.

Canada spent 1.37% of GDP on defence in 2024

Trump has for years called on Canada and European members of NATO to spend more on their militaries. He has correctly noted that Canada has consistently fallen short of NATO’s guideline of having each member spend 2% of gross domestic product on defence.

But Trump has sometimes exaggerated how far Canada is from the 2% target.

He wrongly claimed in early January that Canada spends “less than 1%.” Official NATO figures show Canada spent an estimated 1.37% of GDP on defence in 2024 — fifth lowest in 2024 out of the 31 NATO members with a standing army — up from an estimated 1.31% in 2023. Canada was above 1% for the entirety of Trump’s first presidency, ranging from 1.44% in 2017 to 1.29% in 2019.

Trump also said in early January: “They don’t, essentially, have a military. They have a very small military.”

defence and the Canadian government itself have raised concerns about the size and readiness of the country’s military, but that military very much exists — with more than 63,000 regular service members as of fall 2024, plus more than 20,000 reservists.

The Canadian military and U.S. military jointly operate the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and conduct numerous other activities together, including strategic initiatives in Latvia and the South China Sea. In years past, the Canadian military has fought alongside the U.S. military in the war in Afghanistan (in which more than 150 Canadian troops died), the war against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, the Gulf War, the Korean War and both world wars (in which tens of thousands of Canadian troops died), in addition to participating in other wars and peacekeeping missions.

Trump qualified his claim with the word “essentially.” And he is entitled to question, as Canadian politicians have, whether Canada’s military is strong enough. But Canada certainly isn’t comparable to Iceland, a NATO member with no standing army.

“Canada’s military is not NATO’s largest, but it has regularly made significant contributions, such as holding down Kandahar, one of the toughest places in Afghanistan, with little help until Obama’s surge. It is playing a significant role as the leader of the NATO effort in Latvia,” said Stephen Saideman, the Paterson Chair in International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa and director of the Canadian Defence and Security Network. “It is in the middle of a major recapitalization effort that will give it 88 F-35s, 15 frigates and more. So, smaller than it should be? Sure. Very small? No. None? Not at all.”

Saideman also noted that in absolute terms — not factoring in the size of each member’s economy — Canada is actually one of NATO’s largest spenders on defence; it was eighth highest in 2024 out of 31 members excluding Iceland. “Despite spending less than 2%, Canada is still one of the biggest spenders on military stuff — its economy is larger than most NATO members, so in absolute terms, it buys and spends a lot,” he said.

By Daniel Dale, CNN