A call between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping has taken place, according to Chinese state media.
The bulletin from China was not immediately confirmed by Trump or his team, with the Chinese offering no immediate details about the call itself other than to say the talks took place and that they happened at Trump’s request.
Either way the apparent call would be a significant step in Trump’s highest stake trade talks and appears to be the first time Trump and Xi have spoken since Trump inauguration.
The long-awaited call also comes at a fraught moment for US-China trade talks, which Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has described as “stalled.”
The path towards an eventual trade deal with China — or at least continued de-escalation after a trade truce in May lowered tariffs by 115 percentage points for 90 days — has 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.”
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 perhaps rise this summer after weeks of talk around the notion that markets may be calmed by a TACO (“Trump Always Chickens Out”) trade.
On China, the pact that was inked in May was hailed by Trump as a “total rest” but has looked increasingly fragile in recent days, with both sides charging that the other is cheating in recent days and significant unresolved issues looming — from critical minerals to semiconductors.
Trump and his team say that China has already violated the 90-day truce by not loosening trade restrictions for critical minerals, which are the building blocks in everything from computers to electric vehicle batteries to jet engines to medical devices.
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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