Trump says China 'totally violated' preliminary trade agreement

By Mucahithan Avcioglu

ISTANBUL (AA) - 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.

There was no immediate reaction from the Chinese officials to Trump's claims.

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.