U.S. negotiations with China became increasingly public, with President Donald Trump accusing Beijing of violating a trade deal that was struck earlier this month.
After talks in Geneva, Switzerland, both sides agreed on May 12 to slash their respective tariffs from prohibitively high levels for 90 days to let negotiations continue.
Similarly, the Trump administration claims China is dragging its feet on trade talks. On Friday, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who helped clinch the agreement with China in Geneva, said China is “slow rolling their compliance, which is completely unacceptable and has to be addressed.”
Like Trump, he also did not threaten punitive action to get China to increase its exports of rare earths. Instead, he said, “we’re trying to work through that with them.”
In a response to Trump’s social-media post and Greer’s comments, a spokesperson for China’s embassy in the U.S. pointed to Trump’s trade restrictions.
“Recently, China has repeatedly raised concerns with the US regarding its abuse of export control measures in the semiconductor sector and other related practices,” Liu Pengyu told Fortune in a statement. “China once again urges the US to immediately correct its erroneous actions, cease discriminatory restrictions against China and jointly uphold the consensus reached at the high-level talks in Geneva.”
