By Daniel Dale, CNN

Washington (CNN) — President-elect Donald Trump made numerous false claims during a wide-ranging Tuesday news conference in Florida, many of them related to foreign affairs and international trade. Here is a fact check of some of these claims.

Guns on January 6

Trump repeated his long-debunked claim that none of the rioters at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, were armed with a gun, saying that even if rioters had been charged with insurrection, “this would be the only insurrection in history where people went in as insurrectionists with not one gun…And let me tell you, the people that you’re talking about have a lot of guns in their home for hunting and for shooting and for entertainment. A lot, of lot of good reasons. But there wasn’t one gun that they found.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. Multiple people who illegally entered Capitol grounds during the January 6 riot were armed with guns, plus a wide variety of other weapons.

We may never get a complete inventory of the concealed guns the rioters possessed on January 6, since nearly all of the rioters were able to leave the Capitol without being detained and searched. But it has been proven in court that at least some of the people who illegally entered Capitol grounds had guns.

Mark Mazza of Indiana brought two loaded handguns onto Capitol grounds on January 6; he was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to carrying a pistol without a license and to assaulting an officer with a dangerous weapon (a baton). Another rioter armed with a gun on January 6, Guy Reffitt of Texas, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison after a jury convicted him on multiple charges, including entering and remaining on restricted Capitol grounds with a firearm.

Christopher Alberts of Maryland, who had a pistol during the riot, was found guilty on multiple charges, including illegally possessing the gun on Capitol grounds, and was sentenced to seven years in prison. Jerod Thomas Bargar of Missouri pleaded guilty to entering and remaining on restricted Capitol grounds on January 6 with a pistol and received probation.
Mark Ibrahim, who was an off-duty special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration at the time of the riot, has been charged with crimes including carrying a firearm on Capitol grounds on January 6; he has pleaded not guilty.

In March, John Banuelos of Illinois was charged for allegedly twice firing a pistol in the air after having illegally entered Capitol grounds; he has pleaded not guilty.

In October, Mario Mares of Texas was convicted of unlawfully carrying a firearm on Capitol grounds on January 6. The same month, court documents were unsealed in the case of Texas man Roger Preacher, who pleaded guilty to having a gun on Capitol grounds that day.

Europe and Canada

Trade with the European Union

Trump repeated a false claim he has repeatedly made about European countries and trade: “They don’t take our cars, they don’t take our farm products, they don’t take anything.” He also said, “European Union: We have a trade deficit of $350 billion.”

Facts First: None of this is true.

It’s not true that the European Union doesn’t “take anything” from the US. The US exported about $368 billion in goods to the European Union in 2023 (while importing about $576 billion from the EU that year), US federal figures show.

Trump exaggerated the US trade deficit with the European Union when he said it was “$350 billion.” Even counting only trade in goods, and ignoring the services trade at which the US excels, the nominal (non-inflation-adjusted) deficit was about $209 billion in 2023. While it was on track to be tens of billions higher in 2024, for which complete data is not yet available, it is expected to be well under $300 billion.

It’s also not true that “they don’t take our cars,” though US automakers have often struggled to succeed in Europe. According to a December 2023 report from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, the EU is the second-largest market for US vehicle exports – importing 271,476 US vehicles in 2022, valued at nearly 9 billion euro. (Some of these are vehicles made by European automakers at plants in the US.)

And it’s false that “they don’t take our farm products”; the US government says the EU was the fifth-largest 2022 export market for US agricultural and related products, behind China, Canada, Mexico and Japan.

Aid to Ukraine from the US and Europe

Trump repeated his claim that the US has provided much more aid to Ukraine than Europe has: “Europe is in for a tiny fraction of the money that we’re in. Now, whether you like that situation or not, Europe is much more affected than the United States. We have a thing called the ocean in between us, right? Why are we in for billions and billions of dollars more money than Europe?”

Facts First: This is false. Through October, European countries had committed and provided more aid to Ukraine than the US had during and just before the Russian invasion began in early 2022, according to data from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy think tank in Germany.

The Kiel Institute, which closely tracks aid to Ukraine, found that, from late January 2022 (just before Russia’s invasion in February 2022) through October 2024, the European Union and individual European countries had committed a total of about $250 billion to Ukraine compared to about $123 billion committed by the US (all figures at current exchange rates). Europe also exceeded the US in aid that had actually been “allocated” to Ukraine – defined by the institute as aid either delivered or specified for delivery – at about $129 billion for Europe compared to about $91 billion for the US.

It’s important to note that it’s possible to come up with different totals using different methodology. But Trump’s claim that the US has committed or provided vastly more aid than Europe is not true regardless.

Trade with Canada

Trump, who continued to criticize Canada’s trade practices, claimed “we have a $200 billion deficit” with the northern neighbor.

Facts First: This is false. Even counting only trade in goods, and ignoring the services trade at which the US excels, the nominal deficit was about $64 billion in 2023 and was on track to be similar or slightly lower in 2024, for which complete data is not yet available.

NATO and global conflict

NATO members’ defense spending

Trump claimed that, before he took office, the majority of NATO members “weren’t paying their bills.” He added that “some people didn’t pay anything” and that Germany was at “less than 1%,” referring to the alliance’s target of having members spend 2% of their gross domestic product on defense.

Facts First: All of these Trump claims are wrong in some way. Every NATO member was spending on defense before he took office, though one tiny member, Iceland, does not have a standing army. Germany was spending 1.2% of gross GDP on defense in 2016, the year before Trump took office, not “less than 1%.” And while Trump has habitually referred to NATO members failing to pay “bills” before he came along, the alliance’s 2% target is a “guideline” that does not create bills or debts. In fact, the guideline doesn’t require payments to NATO; rather, it simply requires each country to spend on their own defense programs.

When Trump was president, the guideline was written in forgiving language that made clear that it was not a firm commitment. That version of the guideline, created at a NATO summit in Wales in 2014, said members that had yet to reach 2% would “aim to move towards the 2% guideline within a decade with a view to meeting their NATO Capability Targets and filling NATO’s capability shortfalls.” In other words, the members that were below 2% in 2014 didn’t even have to promise to hit the target by 2024 – simply to make an effort to do so by then.

NATO does require members to make direct contributions to fund the organization’s own operations. But there is no sign that members have failed to make those contributions, which constitute a tiny fraction of the allies’ defense spending, and Trump has made clear that his talk of debts is about the 2% guideline.

You can read more here, including about the current version of the 2% guideline.

Wars

Trump claimed that when he was president, “Everything was good. We had no wars, we defeated ISIS, we had no wars.” He added, “Now I’m going into a world that’s burning with Russia and Ukraine, with Israel…” And he also said: “As you know, we were in no wars, I just finished a couple.”

Facts First: This is false. There were dozens of unresolved wars and armed conflicts when Trump left office in early 2021. And while Trump could have fairly said he didn’t start new wars, his claim that the US was “in no wars” isn’t true.

When Trump left office, US troops were still deployed in combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq; Trump reduced the US military presence in each country, but he didn’t withdraw all US troops. In addition, civil wars in Syria, Yemen and Somalia continued, as did the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was also ongoing, as were the conflicts between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, between Israel and Syria and between Israel and Iran; Islamist insurgents continued their fight in Africa’s Sahel region; there was major violence in Mexico’s long-running drug wars; fighting continued between Ukraine and pro-Russian forces in Ukraine’s Donbas region; and there were lots of other unresolved wars and conflicts around the world.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks armed conflict in countries around the world, said in a June email that it estimates there were active armed conflicts in 51 international states in 2020 and again in 51 international states in 2021.

Immigration

Migration and foreign countries

Trump, speaking of migrants, repeated a familiar story about how foreign countries “released them from their jails, their prisons, and their mental institutions and insane asylums into our country.”

Facts First: There is no evidence for Trump’s claim, which Trump’s own presidential campaign was unable to corroborate. The campaign was unable to provide any evidence even for his narrower claim that South American countries in particular were emptying their mental health facilities to somehow dump patients upon the US.

Trump has sometimes tried to support his claim by making another claim that the global prison population is down. But that’s wrong, too. The recorded global prison population increased from October 2021 to April 2024, from about 10.77 million people to about 10.99 million people, according to the World Prison Population List compiled by experts in the United Kingdom.

“I do a daily news search to see what’s going on in prisons around the world and have seen absolutely no evidence that any country is emptying its prisons and sending them all to the US,” Helen Fair, co-author of the prison population list and research fellow at the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research at Birkbeck, University of London, said in June, when Trump made a similar claim.

The border wall

Trump repeated his usual claim that he built “571 miles” of a wall on the southern border.

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false, an exaggeration. Official government data shows 458 miles were built under Trump – including both wall built where no barriers had existed before and wall built to replace previous barriers.

Miscellaneous

Inflation

Trump repeated a regular claim about inflation: “We have inflation, I believe, at a level that we’ve never had before, there’s never been anything like it.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim that inflation is at an all-time high level is false. First, even when the inflation rate hit its Biden-era peak of 9.1% in June 2022, that 9.1% rate was the highest since 1981, not the highest ever. (Trump has a longstanding habit of exaggerating even figures that would be helpful for him if he cited them correctly.) Second, Trump’s present-tense claim is no longer accurate. Inflation has declined sharply since the June 2022 peak, and the most recent available rate at the time he spoke, for November 2024, was 2.7% – a rate that, the Biden presidency aside, was exceeded as recently as 2011, far less than 50 years ago.

Trump’s gag order

Trump complained again about the gag order imposed on him by the New York judge, Juan Merchan, who has presided over the case in which he was convicted of falsifying business records in relation to a hush money scheme during the 2016 election. He said, “Why do I have a gag order where I’m not allowed to speak? Think of it. I’m the president of the United States, and I’m not allowed to speak. Why? Because if I did speak, people would understand the scam. It’s a scam.”

Facts First: Trump exaggerated; as he did during the trial in 2024, he made Merchan’s gag order sound far broader than it is. The gag order does not prohibit Trump from denouncing the case or the judge himself. It also does not prohibit Trump from speaking to the media about the case, from defending his conduct at issue in the case, or from conducting his broader political activities.

Rather, the gag order forbids Trump from three specific categories of speech:

1) Speaking publicly or directing others to speak publicly about known or foreseeable witnesses, specifically about their participation in the case

2) Speaking publicly or directing others to speak publicly about prosecutors (other than Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg), members of the district attorney’s staff and the court staff, or family members of any of these people including Bragg, if those statements are made with the intent to interfere with the case

3) Speaking publicly or directing others to speak publicly about jurors or prospective jurors

The legitimacy of elections

Trump returned to his dishonesty about the legitimacy of US elections, describing the Biden administration as election cheaters and saying unspecified Trump opponents “tried” to “rig” the 2024 election but were unable to do so.

Facts First: This is nonsense. President Joe Biden beat Trump in a free and fair 2020 election, and Trump beat Vice President Kamala Harris in a free and fair 2024 election. There is no basis for saying Trump’s opponents attempted to cheat in 2024.

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