Donald Trump said on Friday that he and Xi Jinping had agreed to approve a deal over TikTok.
“He approved the TikTok deal,” Trump said about Xi to reporters in the Oval Office, suggesting the leaders signed off on a preliminary agreement. But Trump offered no details about the agreement or when it would be signed.
The American and Chinese leaders had connected over a phone call earlier in the day, the first direct contact between the two leaders since June. China and the US have been at loggerheads over trade negotiations and the future of TikTok, a Chinese-owned social media platform that faces a ban in the US.
Trump had said earlier this week that Washington and Beijing had agreed a deal on TikTok under which it would be transferred to US control, but details of the framework have been scant, and elements reportedly remain to be hashed out. Investors including the US software giant Oracle have been in talks to take a large stake in TikTok’s US operations, which would dilute the amount of China-based ownership to comply with a law Congress passed last year.
On Saturday, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, insisted that the social network would be under American control in the US. “There will be seven seats on the board that controls the app in the United States, and six of those seats will be Americans,” Leavitt said in a Fox News interview with Trump’s former press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany.
Despite concerns that the app would still feed American users video clips selected by TikTok’s proprietary algorithm, which is under Chinese control, Leavitt insisted that “the algorithm will also be controlled by America as well”.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that investors in the TikTok deal would pay the US a fee in exchange for negotiating the agreement with China.
In the call on Friday, the Chinese president “emphasised the vital importance of US-China relations”, according to a Chinese readout of Friday’s phone call.
“China’s position on the TikTok issue is clear,” the readout said. “The Chinese government respects the wishes of companies and welcomes them to conduct commercial negotiations based on market rules and reach solutions that comply with Chinese laws and regulations and balance interests. China hopes that the US will provide an open, fair and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese companies to invest in the US.”
China described the call as “pragmatic, positive, and constructive”.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump described the call as “very productive”. “We made progress on many very important issues including Trade, Fentanyl, the need to bring the War between Russia and Ukraine to an end, and the approval of the TikTok Deal,” Trump wrote.
He said he and Xi would meet at the Asia-Pacificeconomic cooperation summit in South Korea in late October and he would visit China “in the early part of next year”. China has not commented on when Trump and Xi might meet in person.
The TikTok deal was negotiated this week in Madrid, where the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and the Chinese vice-premier He Lifeng met to negotiate a trade deal. The US and China have agreed to a temporary pause in the trade war and the deadline to reach an agreement is 10 November.
The call came as Trump returned from a state visit to the UK, which was accompanied by news of a multibillion-dollar investment deal for US tech companies in the UK. Microsoft will invest $30bn while Nvidia will invest £11bn.
US tech companies have been caught in the cross-hairs of the US-China trade war. This week it was reported that China had ordered its top tech firms to stop buying semiconductors from Nvidia, which makes the world’s most advanced chips. Nvidia’s most high-end models are already banned by the US from being exported to China, but it had developed less sophisticated chips specifically for the Chinese market.
The Chinese readout of the call said Trump had praised Beijing’s recent military parade – the biggest showcase of military might in decades – as “magnificent”. The second world war commemoration parade, which was attended by Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, was widely seen in the west as being a show of unity from an anti-American bloc.
However, China has been keen to stress its cooperation with the allied forces in the second world war. According to the readout, Xi on Friday “pointed out that China and the United States were allies who fought side by side during world war two”.
China described US-China ties as “the most important bilateral relationship in the world”.
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