US President Donald Trump will talk to Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Friday in a push to complete a deal to make the popular social media app Tiktok in the United States.
The call between the two leaders started around 8 o’clock in Washington, according to an official of the White House and the Xinhua press agency of China.
The call can offer instructions on whether the two leaders could meet personally to have a definitive agreement to terminate their trade war and to provide clarity about where the relationships between the two super powers in the world can be led.
This is the second call with Xi since Trump returned to the White House and launched rates on China, which activates back and forth restrictions that created the ties between the two largest economies. But Trump, a Republican, has expressed the willingness to negotiate trade agreements with Beijing, in particular for Tiktok, which is confronted with a US ban unless the Chinese parent company sells its controlling interest.
Another call for Trump and XI about trade tensions
The two men also spoke in June to make the tensions about the limitations of China on the export of rare earth elements too harmless, used in everything, from smartphones to fighter jets.
“I speak to President Xi, as you know, on Friday, to do with tap and also trade,” Trump said Thursday. “And we are very close to deals.”
He said that his relationship with China is “very good”, but noted that the Russian war in Ukraine could end if European countries would bring higher rates for China. Trump did not say whether he intended to increase the rates about Beijing because of the purchase of Moscow’s oil, as he did with India.
The Chinese embassy in Washington on Thursday did not confirm any upcoming top between the leaders, but spokesperson Liu Pengyu said: “Heads-of-state diplomacy plays an unreliable role in offering strategic guidance for China-US relationships.”
Sun Yun, director of the China program in Washington-based think tank Stimson Center, predicted a positive discussion.
“Both parties have a strong desire that the leadership stop would happen, while the details are in the trade agreement and what can be achieved from the top for both parties,” Sun said.
Attempts to complete the Tiktok -Deal
After an American trade meeting earlier this week in Madrid, the American Minister of Finance Scott Bessent said that the parties reached a framework agreement on the ownership of Tiktok, but Trump and XI would probably complete it on Friday.
Trump, who has credited the app to help him to win a different term, has extended a deadline for the app several times to be split off from her Chinese parent company, Bytedance. It is a requirement to allow Tiktok to continue to operate in the US according to a law adopted last year to tackle data privacy and concern about national security.
Trump said that Tiktok has “has enormous value” and the US “has that value in hand because we are the ones who have to approve it.”
American officials have been worried about the roots and ownership of Bytedance, pointing to laws in China that require Chinese companies to hand over data requested by the government. Another concern is the patented algorithm that fills what users see on Tiktok.
Chinese officials said on Monday that a consensus was reached on the permission of the ‘use of intellectual property rights’, including the algorithm, and that the two parties corresponded to trust a partner in processing American user data and content security.
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the Democrat ranking in the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, says that the data and algorithm of Tiktok “should really be in American hands” to meet the law.
More trade problems on the table
Top American and Chinese officials held four rounds of commercial conversations between May and September, with another probably in the coming weeks. Both parties have paused towering rates and withdrawn from hard export checks, but many problems remain unsolved.
Trump in the call would probably try to make it look that the United States prevails in trade negotiations, “said Ali Wyne, senior research and lawyer adviser on American issues at the International Crisis Group.
XI would probably try to underline the economic leverage of China and warn that continuous progress in bilateral relations will depend on a relaxation of American rates, sanctions and export controls, “Wyne said.
No deals have been announced about technical export restrictions, Chinese purchases of American agricultural products or fentanyl. The Trump government has still imposed 20% rates on Chinese goods related to accusations that Beijing has not finished the flow to the US of the chemicals used to make opioids.
Trump’s second-term trade war with Beijing has cost us farmers one of their top markets. From January to July, the export from the American farm to China fell by 53% compared to the same period last year. The damage was even greater in some raw materials: the sale of the American Sorghum to China, for example, fell by 97%.
Josh Gackle, chairman of the American Soybean Association, said that he would follow the outcome of Friday’s call because China, the largest foreign buyer of American beans, paused purchases for this year’s new crop.
“There is still time. It is encouraging that the two countries will continue to talk,” Gackle said. “I think there is frustration at the level of farmer that they have not been able to reach a deal yet.”
Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Paul Wiseman contributed to the report.
—Didi Tang, Associated Press
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