‘What the hell does that mean?’ Trump criticizes Canada, then says he doesn’t understand what he just read | The Star

The headline is misleading. Trump talked about making trade deals and making NAFTA more even, more "fair to the United States". Trump isn't working on it alone, he has different people working on it advancing the interests they care about.

Quote the article:

“John and Kevin gave me something, they told me this,” he said, likely referring to North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven and Rep. Kevin Cramer. Beginning to read, he said, “Canadian wheat markets consistently discriminate against the United States’s wheat by grading it as feed.”

He then pointed quizzically at the audience.

“Do you know what that means? They know what it means,” he said, pointing behind him. “I don’t know what the hell it means. I just know it’s a bad deal. What the hell does that mean?”

Would the average person, off the top of their head know what that means? I didn't. So I looked it up and found a pretty well written piece on the topic. Different wheat is of different quality; the higher quality of wheat, the more money a farmer can get for it.

When Canadian farmers want to export grain to the US, Canadian wheat is treated the same as American wheat; the grading standards are exactly the same.

When US farmers want to export their grain to Canada, Canada automatically downgrades it to the lowest, cheapest grade (feed wheat) which fetches the lowest price. Essentially, the Canadian market actively discriminates against wheat of quality that would be a higher grade in the American market, and just brands it as the lowest grade if it comes from the US.

That's not really equal access to the markets, and I could see why American farmers (and Trump's administration) would consider that an unfair deal - even if the exact specifics of why are not something Trump knew off the top of his head.

Real clickbait article headline...

/r/canada Thread Link - thestar.com