Trade war 2.0? China responds fiercely to 'groundless' Trump accusations of 'seriously' violating Geneva terms
China’s commerce ministry on Monday responded to a barb from US President Donald Trump on Friday, stating that his accusations of Beijing violating the terms of the Geneva talks were “groundless”. It also promised to take forceful measures to safeguard its interests, sparking fears of a renewed trade war.
On Friday, Trump had claimed that China had “seriously violated” the terms of its agreement in Geneva, despite his tariffs plunging Beijing into “grave economic danger”, which even led to what he called “civil unrest”.
“The US government has unilaterally and repeatedly provoked new economic and trade frictions, exacerbating uncertainty and instability in bilateral economic and trade relations,” the statement from the commerce ministry added.
They accused the US of unilaterally (and repeatedly) provoking it with new restrictions that they called discriminatory—such as guidelines on exporting chips for AI, limiting the sale of chip designing software to China and the recent revocation of Chinese student visas, a Reuters report said, quoting a Bloomberg article.
This quickly affected stock markets across the Asia-Pacific region, which dropped today amid investor anxiety over the resurgence of the trade war that shook markets worldwide.
However, China has not yet clarified what forceful measures it plans to take.
The two nations had agreed to pause triple-digit tariffs for 90 days—the result of a trade war that quickly escalated with tit-for-tat tariffs—in negotiations at Geneva, Switzerland, last month.
China had also promised to lift trade counter-measures that restricted its exports of material required for the production of US semiconductors and electronics.
The legality of the tariffs was also contested last week, following a ruling by a US trade court that declared them illegal. Two days later, his administration filed for “emergency relief” from the order “to avoid the irreparable national-security and economic harms at stake”, resulting in a temporary pause in the decision before the appeal hearing. A date has not been set for this hearing yet.
The case is expected to reach the Supreme Court, should the appeal hearing strike down the tariffs.