Washington (AFP)

US President Donald Trump, campaigning for re-election, has again put the maximum pressure on the US Central Bank (Fed) Wednesday as trade negotiations with Beijing trample and the financial markets falter.

Trump reiterated on Wednesday in a long series of tweets his diatribes against the Fed, demanding that it reduce rates "faster and stronger" and calling it "incompetent".

"They have to lower rates faster and stronger (...) The incompetence is terrible to see, especially when you know that everything could be easily resolved," wrote the president.

He also referred to the rate cuts by three central banks on Wednesday (India, New Zealand and Thailand), which led to a drop in bond yields.

"Our problem is not China (...) It's the Federal Reserve that is too proud to admit to having made a mistake by raising rates too fast and too high. (I was right!)", Proclaims still the president.

In the midst of the Sino-US trade war, which saw the Chinese currency depreciate sharply, and after the rate cut last week by the Fed, three Asian-centric central banks took investors short by lowering their yields. rate Wednesday.

The Central Bank of New Zealand has reduced its main interest rate to 1%, a historic low. The Indian central bank lowered its main policy rate by 35 basis points to 5.4%, while Thailand dropped its rate by 0.25 points to 1.50%.

For a year now, Donald Trump has been criticizing the Fed. Despite the monetary easing on July 31, when the Fed lowered rates by a quarter of a percentage point, the White House guest redoubled its pressure given the difficulties in trade negotiations with China.

The talks between Washington and Beijing had resumed in Shanghai last week after a long hiatus since the spring, Donald Trump having ruled that the Chinese side back on its promises after several months of negotiations.

But tensions were revived when Donald Trump, dissatisfied with the lack of progress in the talks, promised, from 1 September, to inflict 10% additional tariff on 300 billion dollars of imports of Chinese products.

In the process, Beijing dropped the yuan on Monday below 7 yuan for a dollar, for the first time in a decade, and, above all, said it would not buy US agricultural products as it had promised.

- Currency manipulation? -

Under Donald Trump, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin countered by officially accusing Beijing of manipulating its currency and intervening on the foreign exchange market to bring it down, a way of counteracting tariffs that make it expensive. prices of Chinese goods.

This formal accusation is the first in 25 years, but some economists doubt the handling criteria brandished by Donald Trump.

"The depreciation of the yuan on Monday was not artificial (...) it is the natural market response to the new US tariffs," said former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers in a Washington Post panel on Wednesday. "There is no proven manipulation," he said.

Wednesday in New York, Wall Street appeared in the red, looking on the way to its worst week of the year. The Dow Jones index lost nearly 600 points during the morning session, before reducing its losses.

Investors were especially troubled by the drop in interest rates on the bond market.

The 10-year US debt yield briefly dropped below the 1.6% mark, a three-year low. Fearing an economic slowdown, investors rushed to bonds, an asset considered more secure, driving up their prices and thus lowering their rates.

For its part, the US Central Bank, whose next monetary meeting is not expected before September 18, has neither excluded nor promised an immediate rate cut. The Fed has said it is ready to continue to support the expansion and financial market participants are banking on at least another two-quarter declines by the end of the year.

A senior official of the Monetary Committee, James Bullard, president of the Fed Saint Louis (Missouri), meanwhile, said Tuesday in an interview with AFP that the Fed had already "done a lot" to offset the impact commercial uncertainties.

© 2019 AFP