US President Donald Trump held a “productive” call with his Chinese counterpart on Friday — heralding progress on a TikTok deal. The POTUS said he would meet Xi Jinping next month during the APEC summit in South Korea and indicated plans to visit China “early next year”. The Chinese President also urged the US to avoid restrictive trade measures during the call.
According to the state-run Xinhua News Agency, Xi had urged Trump to avoid restrictive, unilateral trade measures during the call. He however told President Trump that China welcomed negotiations over TikTok. The official Chinese readout described their first call in three months as “pragmatic, positive and constructive” but did not offer any concrete update on the TikTok deal.
“He approved the TikTok deal. The TikTok deal is well on its way,” Trump however told reporters in the Oval Office.
He added that there could remain a formal signing of the agreement. Trump has signaled multiple times this week that a deal might be forthcoming and previously insisted that he would “confirm everything” during the conversation with Xi. Chinese approval of the framework deal reached by the two sides earlier this week is necessary for TikTok to remain open in the US. Congress had ordered the app shut down for US users by January 2025 if its American assets were not sold by Chinese owner ByteDance — with Trump issuing multiple extensions to keep the popular short video platform functional.
What did Trump say?
“I just completed a very productive call with President Xi of China. We made progress on many very important issues including Trade, Fentanyl, the need to bring the War between Russia and Ukraine to an end, and the approval of the TikTok Deal…The call was a very good one, we will be speaking again by phone, appreciate the TikTok approval…” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
He also said that the two leaders had agreed to meet during the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in South Korea. Trump already revealed that they had agreed to have him visit China “in the early part of next year”. He also added that President Xi Jinping would also come to the United States “at an appropriate time”.