Trump and Xi break the ice in long-awaited call, agree to restart trade talks
A call between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping took place Thursday and appears to have restarted previously stalled trade talks between the two nations.
"Our respective teams will be meeting shortly at a location to be determined," President Trump announced on Truth Social after what he described as a "very good phone call" that lasted for one and a half hours.
"The conversation was focused almost entirely on TRADE. Nothing was discussed concerning Russia/Ukraine, or Iran,"
Trump said. He added that both leaders invited and accepted invitations from the other for a presidential level visit but no clarity on who might go first.
Chinese state media also confirmed the call as well as some details, most notably the apparent restarting of trade talks.
Trump announced that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer would represent the US side. Bessent and Greer led the recent talks with China in Geneva that led to a May truce that lowered tariffs by 115 percentage points for 90 days
But that truce immediately began to teeter amid accusations of cheating on both sides with Bessent recently describing the talks as "stalled."
The path toward an eventual trade deal with China — or at least continued deescalation — had also been been in question, especially after a recent Trump social media missive took aim at Xi personally by saying that dealing with the leader is "extremely hard."
Perhaps the top issues for Trump and his team are claims that China has violated the 90-day truce by not loosening trade restrictions on critical minerals. These minerals are the building blocks in everything from computers to electric vehicle batteries to jet engines to medical devices.
"There should no longer be any questions respecting the complexity of Rare Earth products," Trump wrote Thursday, without providing additional clarity.
Read more: What Trump's tariffs mean for the economy and your wallet
Thursday's apparent call was the latest step in a rapid-fire series of developments this week across three continents offering caution that trade tensions could rise this summer after weeks of talk around the notion that markets may be calmed by a TACO ("Trump Always Chickens Out") trade.
Trump hailed the May pact with China as a "total reset," but it has looked increasingly fragile in recent days. Both sides have charged in recent days that the other is cheating, and significant unresolved issues, from critical minerals to semiconductors.
The Chinese Ministry of Commerce has denied the claims and accused the US of its own actions to undermine the deal.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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