Closing post
Time to wrap up….
Trade tensions are ramping up again between the US and China, with Donald Trump accusing Beijing of breaking the tariff truce the two nations agreed in Geneva just a few weeks ago.
Both countries had agreed to temporarily pause their escalating tariffs, which at one point hit 145%. But on Friday the president wrote on his social media platform Truth Social that “China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US.”
Though Trump did not specify how China had violated the agreement, Jamieson Greer, US Trade Representative, noted in an interview with CNBC that critical minerals was one area of particular concern. He said:
We haven’t seen the flow of some of those critical minerals as they were supposed to be doing …China continues to, you know, slow down and choke off things like critical minerals and rare Earth magnets.”
US stock markets fell at the open, with the blue chip S&P 500 index down 0.5% in early trading.
My colleague Lauren Aratini has the story here:
Closer to home, Alan Taylor, a member of the Bank of England’s interest rate-setting committee, warned that higher-than-expected inflation and growth figures should not distract policymakers from continuing to cut borrowing costs.
“I’m not going to pre-emptively announce my vote, but I think I indicated in my dissent that I thought we needed to be on a lower [monetary] policy path,” Taylor told the Financial Times in an interview.
Earlier this month the Bank of England lowered rates by 25 basis points to 4.25%, taking it to the lowest level since 2023.
My colleague Kalyeena Makortoff has the full story:
In other news
Donald Trump declared that China has “totally violated its agreement” against the US on trade just two weeks after the countries reached a deal, raising fears that the trade war will continue to rattle the global economy.
“I made a FAST DEAL with China in order to save them from what I thought was going to be a very bad situation,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday morning. “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’s post follows comments from the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, on Fox News that trade talks with China “are a bit stalled”, though he said that there will be more discussions with Chinese officials in the coming weeks. The White House has not offered any specific details on what has stalled trade talks.
US stock markets turned negative after the news. On Friday morning, the S&P was down 0.1% and Nasdaq was down 0.3%.
Read the full report here:
