Trump accuses China of violating Geneva trade agreement

NBC News

a day ago

President Donald Trump sent stock futures diving early Friday after he accused China of breaking the handshake pact the two countries made in Geneva earlier this month that had helped reset a trade standoff.
In a post on Truth Social just after 8 a.m. ET, Trump wrote China "HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US" and signaled a tough response lay ahead.
"So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!" the president said.
S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures fell about 0.5%, while Dow Jones Industrial Average futures declined about 0.4%.
The " trade win" announced by the White House May 12 was expected to lead to China removing retaliatory tariffs and a suspension of "non-tariff countermeasures taken against the United States." Both sides agreed to lower tariffs on each other by 115% for 90 days.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, speaking on CNBC Friday morning as Trump posted his message, said "this has been something that we've been discussing" since meeting with China in Geneva. "The Chinese are slow rolling their compliance, which is completely unacceptable," Greer added.
"You make every effort to be diplomatic and professional and to do things behind closed doors. But at some point the impact on on the U.S. economy, or the trade relationship, becomes such that it's hard to withhold that anymore," he continued.
On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said trade talks with China were "a bit stalled." Bessent said he believed there would be more talks in the coming weeks but "given the magnitude of the talks," Trump and Xi would likely need to "weigh in with each other" first.
The matter hit a further snag Thursday after an appeals court temporarily reinstated a set of tariffs a federal trade court had voided just hours earlier, casting fresh doubt on the path forward for Trump's tariffs gambit. The case is expected to make its way to the Supreme Court.
There has been almost no resolution in the market fluctuations Trump's trade war has set off. The week's back-and-forth court opinions erased most of the stock gains from the first decision. Yet before Trump's Friday post, stocks were poised for a weekly gain.
Since Trump took office, the S&P 500 has fallen approximately 2% — a modest decline that masks substantial weekly and even daily swings.