AP FACT CHECK: Trump adrift on tax rates, Canada, econ lingo
WASHINGTON — In an interview with The Economist, President Donald Trump whiffed on a batch of economic facts. He got the Canada-U.S. trade balance wrong, misplaced the U.S. in the world ranks of tax burdens and claimed to have coined an economic phrase that’s been familiar to economists for some 80 years.
A look at some of his assertions to the magazine:
TRUMP: “We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world.”
THE FACTS: Trump has repeatedly made variations on this false claim. The overall U.S. tax burden is actually one of the lowest among the 32 developed and large emerging-market economies tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Taxes made up 26.4 per cent of the total U.S. economy in 2015, according to the OECD. That’s far below Denmark’s tax burden of 46.6 per cent, Britain’s 32.5 per cent or Germany’s 36.9 per cent. Just four OECD countries had a lower tax bite than the U.S.: South Korea, Ireland, Chile and Mexico.