How Trump uses disinformation in his trade war with Canada [Video]

“Nobody knows that Canada is charging our dairy farmers,” U.S. President Donald Trump complained Friday in the Oval Office. “They have 270 per cent tariffs. Nobody knows that. Nobody knows it. They have up to 400 per cent. They have a couple of tariffs at 400 per cent. Nobody knows that. Nobody talks about that.”

In fact some people have talked about it a lot, most prominently Trump himself and his Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Indeed, one of the issues complicating the negotiations over tariffs between the U.S. and Canada is that the president is telling millions of Americans that Canada routinely charges exorbitant tariffs on a range of U.S. goods from cars to clothing.

The Trump administration has spread disinformation about the true terms of trade between the two nations as a pressure tactic, falsely presenting the “over-quota” tariff rates that are almost never charged as the normal rate.

Both Trump and Lutnick seem content to spread an …