In recent remarks to the press, President Donald Trump restated his intention to impose 25% tariffs on U.S. imports from Mexico and Canada as early as Feb. 1. His reasoning: "vast" illegal immigration and "massive" amounts of fentanyl coming to the U.S. from those countries. But Trump drew a false equivalence between the two countries. In fact, the magnitude of the difference is enormous.

“We’re thinking in terms of 25% on Mexico and Canada because they’re allowing vast numbers of people … to come in and fentanyl to come in,” Trump told a reporter who asked about the tariffs while Trump was signing executive orders in the Oval Office on Jan. 20.

The following day, in a press conference from the White House, Trump again explained why he may move forward with the tariffs.

“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,” Trump said. “They could’ve stopped them and they didn’t. And they’ve killed 300,000 people last year, my opinion, have been destroyed by drugs, by fentanyl. The fentanyl coming through Canada is massive. The fentanyl coming through Mexico is massive.”

Trump is exaggerating the number of fentanyl-related deaths in the U.S., and his Canada and Mexico comparison is off-base, too.

In this post, we take a quick look at the numbers to give some relative perspective. […]

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