President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping held a phone call Thursday amid ongoing tensions between the two superpowers — with a new in-person meeting planned soon.
Chinese state media and the Chinese foreign ministry said the call happened at the White House’s request. The Chinese foreign ministry said Thursday morning that the call was ongoing as of 9 a.m. ET.
In a Truth Social post just before 11 a.m., Trump said the call lasted about 90 minutes, but provided few details about it other than that it focused on trade. He said a meeting will now be held “shortly” between representatives from the two nations at a location to be determined.
It’s the first known call between the two leaders in Trump’s second term, though the two spoke in January before Trump’s inauguration.
Trump had posted to social media early Wednesday to air his frustrations with how the conversations between the U.S. and China have been going.
“I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!” Trump wrote at 2:17 a.m.
The U.S. and China have been locked in a heated trade war since the early days of Trump’s second administration, with volleys of tariffs and retaliatory tariffs ratcheting up duties on billions of dollars’ worth of goods.
The current tariff level on Chinese imports brought into the U.S. is at least 30%. That’s down from the 145% punitive level Trump had imposed until a handshake agreement in Geneva last month led to a mutual stand-down that also saw China reduce its duties on U.S. imports down to 10% from 125%.
But tensions heated up again Friday after Trump accused China of violating the Geneva understanding, though without adding many specifics. That prompted China to level a similar accusation against Trump on Monday.
A China spokesperson said Xi emphasized on the call that his nation has “ earnestly implemented” the Geneva agreement and that the U.S. should “revoke its negative measures against China.”
Trump remains fixated on closing America’s trade deficit with China, which is the difference between how much the U.S. imports from China versus how much it exports. On Thursday, fresh data showed the gap dropped sharply in April — with the deficit with China declining to $19.7 billion, the lowest level since March 2020.
“The sharp narrowing in the April U.S. international trade deficit tells us the temporary first-quarter splurge by businesses pulling-forward demand to get ahead of tariffs has run its course,” Wells Fargo economists wrote in a note after the data was released.
Meanwhile use of low-cost e-commerce giants Temu and Shein has plunged in America following the closure of the so-called “de minimis” loophole that kept low-cost goods tariff-free.
Trump has pledged that his unprecedented tariffs gambit will lead to trade deals — but despite a flurry of promises and pronouncements that they are near, no firm deals have materialized. Even the agreement with the U.K. announced last month from the Oval Office has been described as merely a “political pact” rather than a formalized, mutually beneficial trade agreement.
It’s led to growing critiques that Trump’s tariffs strategy has little to show so far besides scrambling the investment and hiring plans of businesses the world over.
Trump faces a particularly complex set of issues with China. Alongside trade, he is also attempting to wrestle TikTok away from Chinese ownership, while seeking to stem the flow of illicit fentanyl that authorities say largely originates from Chinese manufacturers.
While there are signs of slowing fentanyl seizures at the U.S. -Mexico border, there has been no sign of progress on the TikTok talks. A deadline that would force TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell the popular social media app or face a U.S. ban is set to expire June 19. Trump now faces the prospect of having to extend the deadline for a third time.
Tara Prindiville, Rebecca Shabad, Megan Lebowitz, Peter Guo, Rae Wang and Dawn Liu contributed.
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