Trump says China 'totally violated' preliminary trade agreement

- Chinese embassy in Washington, DC, responds to president's accusation by urging US to 'immediately correct' its 'erroneous' actions and lift restrictions on chips

ISTANBUL

US President Donald Trump accused China on Friday of breaching the preliminary trade agreement announced earlier this month, possibly plunging the world economy back into a state of uncertainty after a sigh of relief from the deal in Geneva.

"So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!" said Trump in a social media post, claiming that China has broken the agreement to halt retaliatory tariffs against the US.

In the same post, the US president reiterated his belief that the Chinese economy is in "grave economic danger" due to the tariffs he imposed.

"Two weeks ago China was in grave economic danger! The very high Tariffs I set made it virtually impossible for China to TRADE into the United States marketplace which is, by far, number one in the World," Trump said.

He claimed that many factories in China had closed and that there was "civil unrest," which he did not like, so he quickly reached an agreement with Beijing to "save" them.

"I made a FAST DEAL with China in order to save them from what I thought was going to be a very bad situation, and I didn’t want to see that happen," Trump noted.

Due to this deal, everything "quickly" stabilized and China got back to business as usual, the US president stressed.

"Everybody was happy! That is the good news!!! The bad news is that China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US," Trump added.

Meanwhile, the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC, responded to the president's accusation by urging the US to "immediately correct" its "erroneous" actions and lift the restrictions on chips..

“Recently, China has repeatedly raised concerns with the US regarding its abuse of export control measures in the semiconductor sector and other related practices,” the embassy's spokesperson Liu Pengyu was quoted by CNBC as saying.

“China once again urges the US to immediately correct its erroneous actions, cease discriminatory restrictions against China, and jointly uphold the consensus reached at the high-level talks in Geneva,” the spokesperson noted.

The US has been restricting advanced AI chip exports to China to cripple the nation's ability to reach the advanced technologies.

The latest move came on April 15, when the US banned Nvidia from exporting its H20 chips to China for the "indefinite future." Nvidia estimated that the ban would cost them $5.5 billion in the first fiscal quarter.

Earlier this month, Washington warned US companies against using Chinese AI silicon, such as Huawei's Ascend processors, in an effort to halt the global spread of Chinese AI technology. The Chinese Commerce Ministry denounced the action on Monday, saying the US should "immediately correct its wrongdoings" and stop using "discriminatory" tactics.

The world's top two economies agreed on a preliminary trade deal after talks in Geneva on May 10-11, suspending retaliatory tariffs for 90 days and mutually lowering the tariff rate by 115%.

The US' tariff rate against China would be lowered to 30% from 145%, while China's rate against the US would be slashed to 10% from 125% as of May 14.