Trump signals fresh trade tensions with China, accusing Beijing of violating a deal
US President Donald Trump has signalled renewed trade tensions with China, arguing that Beijing had "violated" a deal to de-escalate tariffs, at a time when both sides appeared deadlocked in negotiations.
"China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US," Mr Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.
"So much for being Mr NICE GUY!" he wrote.
The president's post on Friday came hours after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that trade talks with China were "a bit stalled" in an interview with broadcaster Fox News.
Two weeks after breakthrough negotiations that resulted in a temporary truce in the trade war between the US and China, Mr Bessent said progress since then has been slow, but said he expects more talks in the next few weeks.
The world's two biggest economies had agreed to temporarily lower staggeringly high tariffs they had imposed on each other, in a pause to last 90 days, after talks between top officials in Geneva.
Asked about the post on CNBC, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer took aim at Beijing for continuing to "slow down and choke off things like critical minerals".
He added that the US' trade deficit with China "continues to be enormous", and that Washington was not seeing major shifts in Beijing's behaviour.
On Thursday, Mr Bessent had suggested that Mr Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, could get involved in the situation.
He said there could be a call between the two leaders eventually.
The US and China had agreed to a 90-day pause on measures and that tariffs would be slashed by 115 per cent, after talks in Switzerland this month.
Washington agreed to temporarily reduce its additional tariffs on Chinese imports from 145 per cent to 30 per cent, while China lowered its added duties from 125 per cent to 10 per cent.
However, the deal did not include tariffs on cars, steel and aluminium.
The US tariff level remains higher as it also includes a 20 per cent levy that the Trump administration recently imposed on Chinese goods over the country's alleged role in the illicit drug trade -- an issue that Beijing has pushed back against.
The high tariff levels, while still in place, forced much trade between the two countries to grind to a halt, as businesses paused shipments to wait for both governments to reach an agreement to lower the levies.
Meanwhile, on Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron said that division between the US and China was the main risk currently confronting the world.
Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Asia's major annual defence and security conference, he emphasised the need for building new coalitions between Europe and partners in the Indo-Pacific.
The French president followed the leaders of China, Japan and other European countries in visiting the region in recent weeks, in a sign of Southeast Asia's strategic importance amid uncertainties on global supply chains and trade.
"I will be clear, France is a friend and an ally of the United States, and is a friend, and we do cooperate - even if sometimes we disagree and compete - with China," said Mr Macron.
He added: "You have to choose a side. If we do so, we will kill the global order, and we will destroy methodically, all the institutions we created after the Second World War in order to preserve peace and to have cooperation on health, on climate, on human rights and so on."
The French president said Asia and Europe have a common interest in preventing the disintegration of the global order.
"The time for non-alignment has undoubtedly passed, but the time for coalitions of action has come, and requires that countries capable of acting together give themselves every means to do so," he said.
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