Source: RT en Español
What it’s about: As the G20 approaches amid a trade war between China and the United States, coverage on President Donald Trump’s new tariff threats on China naturally increases. But the RT en Español piece wrongly affirms in its title that President Trump has threatened to impose additional tariffs immediately if the Chinese president does not attend the G20.
Why it’s misleading: While President Trump did in fact raise the threat of additional tariffs on China, the article misleads the reader to think that the deciding factor between imposing tariffs or not is Xi Jinping’s attendance to the G20 entirely.
Based on CNN reporting of an interview provided by President Trump to CNBC on Monday June 10, 2019, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to slap tariffs on another $300 billion of Chinese exports to the United States if China’s leader Xi Jinping doesn’t meet him at the G20 in Japan, as opposed to not attending the summit overall.
In that same interview, President Trump also mentioned that he expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, but if they met or didn’t meet it would be fine either way. According to a search on social media analytics firm Buzzsumo, in one day, this article was shared 38 times through Twitter and generated 1.7k engagements via Facebook, with 545 engagements attributed to Argentina-based site La Verdad Oculta.