US President Donald Trump held a long-awaited phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping Thursday as the leaders of the world’s two biggest economies tried to avoid an all-out trade war.
Trump said that the call reached a “very positive conclusion” and that they agreed to meet in person — but Beijing issued a more muted readout saying that Xi spoke of a need to “correct the course” of ties.
The call — the first to be publicly announced since Trump returned to power in January — comes after Beijing and Washington had accused each other of jeopardizing a trade war truce agreed last month in Geneva.
“The call lasted approximately one and a half hours, and resulted in a very positive conclusion for both Countries,” Trump said on Truth Social, adding that US and Chinese trade teams would hold a new meeting “shortly.”
“President Xi graciously invited the First Lady and me to visit China, and I reciprocated. As Presidents of two Great Nations, this is something that we both look forward to doing,” Trump added.
Trump said they would announce the time and place of the “soon to be meeting” later.
The two leaders did not, however, discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Trump said, despite long-standing US hopes that Beijing could exert influence on Moscow to end the war.
“The conversation was focused almost entirely on TRADE,” said Trump, adding that they hoped to have resolved issues over crucial rare earth minerals used in tech products.
Relations between superpower rivals Beijing and Washington have been fraught ever since Trump in April introduced sweeping worldwide tariffs that targeted China most heavily of all.
At one point the United States hit China with additional levies of 145 percent on its goods as both sides engaged in tit-for-tat escalation. China’s countermeasures on US goods reached 125 percent.
Trump had accused Xi as recently as Wednesday of being “extremely hard to make a deal with.”
Chinese state media said Trump had requested the call. There was no immediate confirmation from the White House.
‘Correcting the course’
In its more restrained readout, Beijing said that relations needed more work.
“Correcting the course of the big ship of Sino-US relations requires us to steer well and set the direction, especially to eliminate all kinds of interference and even destruction, which is particularly important,” Xi told Trump according to state news agency Xinhua.
It said Xi told Trump he was welcome to visit China again — following an earlier visit during his first term in 2017.
Until Thursday, the two leaders had not had any confirmed contact more than five months since the Republican returned to power, despite frequent claims by the US president that such a call was imminent.
Trump said in a Time Magazine interview in April that Xi had called him — but Beijing insisted that there had been no call recently.
Beijing and Washington agreed in Geneva last month to slash their staggeringly high tariffs for 90 days, but the two sides have since traded blame for derailing the deal.
Trump argued last week that China had “totally violated” the agreement, without providing further details.
China’s commerce ministry hit back this week, saying the Trump administration had since introduced “discriminatory restrictive measures”, including revoking Chinese student visas in the United States.
Trump then dialed up tensions this week.
“I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!” he posted Wednesday on his Truth Social platform.
Washington has meanwhile targeted Chinese nationals who entered the United States both legally and illegally, with the president vowing to aggressively revoke Chinese student visas.
Trump has separately ramped up tensions with other trade partners, including the European Union, by vowing to double global tariffs on steel and aluminum to 50 percent from Wednesday.
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