Blitz Bureau
President Donald Trump emerged on June 5 from a long-awaited 90-minute telephone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping encouraged that ongoing trade tensions could soon be resolved, reported CNN.
Calling the conversation “very good,” Trump said in a social media post after the call that follow-up talks would soon be arranged with his economic team, and that he and Xi had invited each other to visit each other’s respective nations.
Trump said the call focused almost entirely on trade, without touching on other geopolitical issues like Iran and Ukraine. The call “resulted in a very positive conclusion for both Countries,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
It comes after a long period of silence between the leaders, and the discrepancy in how each side was talking – or not talking – about the call ahead of time only underscored a widening gulf between the world’s two largest economies.
Win-win results
During the call, Xi called for the United States and China to “seek winwin results in the spirit of equality and respect each other’s concerns,” while urging Washington to “remove the negative measures taken against China,” according to a readout from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “Recalibrating the direction of the giant ship of China-US relations requires us to take the helm and set the right course,” Xi told his US counterpart.
Tensions have been rising between the two sides in the weeks after they agreed to a 90-day trade truce last month, which hit pause on their tit-for-tat escalation of tariffs. Trump accused China last week of “violating” the agreement – a charge Beijing has denied, while it accused the US of taking steps to “seriously undermine” that consensus.
In his readout following the call, Trump singled out the issue of rare earth minerals, which China had placed restrictions on, as an area where he made progress with his counterpart.
“There should no longer be any questions respecting the complexity of rare earth products,” Trump wrote. He said a meeting between the economic teams would occur “shortly” in a location to be determined. And he said the leaders look forward to visiting each other.
Rare earth minerals
“During the conversation, President Xi graciously invited the First Lady and me to visit China, and I reciprocated. As Presidents of two Great Nations, this is something that we both look forward to doing,” Trump wrote.
US officials had signaled in recent days that a call between the two leaders could help jump-start progress in expected upcoming trade talks, which had appeared to stall following the initial truce reached in Geneva.
