Trump says China ‘totally violated’ trade agreement with US

US President Donald Trump accused China of violating an agreement with the US to ease tariffs, ratcheting up tensions between the world’s two largest economies.

“China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US. So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Friday.

The president did not specify how China was not abiding by the agreement negotiated earlier this month in Switzerland. At the time, both countries said they would scale back tit-for-tat tariffs and continue their talks on trade.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in an interview with CNBC suggested that China had been slow-walking their efforts, saying that the administration has “been very focused on monitoring Chinese compliance, or in this case, noncompliance, with the agreement.”

Greer suggested that one particular concern was critical minerals.

“We haven’t seen the flow of some of those critical minerals as they were supposed to be doing,” he said, later adding, “China continues to, you know, slow down and choke off things like critical minerals and rare Earth magnets.”

China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment made outside working hours.

The agreement earlier this month buoyed investors who had been eager for Beijing and Washington to find an offramp from their tariff fight, which had roiled markets and threatened to spark a global slowdown. But since the deal, US and China tensions have flared again.

The Trump administration has announced that it would start revoking some Chinese student visas, a move that Beijing has blasted as “discriminatory.” And Trump officials have introduced new restrictions on the sale of chip design software.

The New York Times reported officials have barred the export of critical US jet engine parts and technology to China.

Trump’s comments also come a day after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that talks with China on trade were underway but had “stalled.” Bessent suggested that a call between Trump and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping might be necessary to break the deadlock.

“I think that given the magnitude of the talks, given the complexity, that this is going to require both leaders to weigh in with each other,” Bessent said in a Fox News interview.

The last time the two presidents spoke was in January, before Trump’s inauguration. The US president said he would speak to the Chinese leader “maybe at the end of the week” following the Geneva talks — which concluded in mid-May — but that call did not appear to take place.

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