President Donald Trump is "absolutely wrong" when he accuses China of manipulating its currency lower, Dennis Gartman told CNBC on Thursday.
Trump has repeatedly maintained China keeps its yuan artificially low against the dollar to make Chinese exports cheaper, "stealing" American manufacturing jobs.
"The Chinese are not manipulating their currency downward. If they've done anything, and I've argued this for months and months, the Chinese have been supporting their currency instead," the editor and publisher of The Gartman Letter said in an interview with "Power Lunch."
"If they are manipulating to weaken their currency, they're doing it 180 degrees in the wrong direction and somehow I don't believe that the Chinese are illogical and that silly when it comes to foreign exchange," he added.
Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are meeting for the first time on Thursday and Friday in Florida. Last week, Trump tweeted that he expected a "difficult" meeting.
Gartman's comments followed those of BlackRock Chairman and CEO , who told "Squawk Box" on Thursday that China has been keeping its currency high.
"They are a currency manipulator, but the opposite. They have spent almost $1 trillion keeping the currency where it is," he said.
"If you look at exactly their behaviors, they are listening to President Trump, they're trying to keep their currency strong," he added.
While Trump has called China the "grand champions" of currency manipulation, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told CNBC in February that he wasn't ready to pass judgment on China's currency practices.
"We have a process within Treasury where we go through and look at currency manipulation across the board. We'll go through that process. We'll do that as we have in the past. We're not making any judgments until we continue that process," Mnuchin said.