President Donald Trump on Friday lashed out at China once more by claiming that Beijing was somehow not abiding by an interim deal under which both American and Chinese tariff rates on each other’s exports would be dialed back after Trump’s trade war caused them to spike precipitously.
Writing on Truth Social, the president claimed China had been in “grave economic danger” before the deal was reached two weeks ago after negotiations between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese officials in Switzerland.
He also suggested that the whopping 154-percent tax he had forced American importers to pay on Chinese goods had been “devastating” for China and had caused what he implied was rioting in Chinese streets, causing him to relent and agree to the de-escalation agreement negotiated by Bessent.
“Many factories closed and there was, to put it mildly, “civil unrest.” I saw what was happening and didn’t like it, for them, not for us. 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,” he said.
Continuing, the president claimed the deal had caused “everything” to “quickly stabilize” with Chinese manufacturers going back to “business as usual” as “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. So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!” he added.
It was not immediately clear what the president was talking about. Although there have been press reports of strikes and protests by Chinese workers employed by the electric car manufacturer BYD, according to China Labour Bulletin those protests began on March 28, three days before Trump announced the “Liberation Day” tariffs that started a tit-for-tat which caused both China and the U.S. to effectively double the cost of imports from either country.
It was also unclear how Trump believes China has violated the terms of the agreement, which laid out a 90-day pause in the exorbitant mutual tariffs to allow for more talks between the countries. But a White House official told The Independent that Trump and other administration officials have been frustrated by China’s failure to relax restrictions on the export of rare earth metals, which are used in manufacturing for advanced electric motors and other electronic products, including those with military applications.
Earlier this week, the Trump administration imposed export controls that will prevent American companies from selling Chinese buyers software used for semiconductor design, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced plans to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students” who are studying in the U.S.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described the visa move as part of Trump’s “ongoing effort to protect our homeland from espionage and other hostile actions.”
A Chinese embassy spokesperson, Liu Pengyu, called on the U.S. to drop “discriminatory restrictions” and for both Washington and Beijing to “jointly uphold the consensus reached at the high-level talks in Geneva.”
“Since the China-US economic and trade talks in Geneva, both sides have maintained communication over their respective concerns in the economic and trade fields on various bilateral and multilateral occasions at multiple levels,” he said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a query on what unrest and violations the president was referring to in his post.
