Trump agrees to visit China after ice-breaking call with Xi

Washington: US President Donald Trump has accepted an invitation to visit Beijing, as he declared a trade deal with China was in good shape after a phone call with President Xi Jinping – their first since Trump returned to power in January.

The long-awaited call between the two leaders included a renewed joint commitment to reaching a deal, a promising sign after a fragile truce struck in Geneva last month appeared on the verge of collapsing after both countries accused each other of not honouring their terms.

However, there was some divergence in their respective accounts of the call, which, according to Trump, lasted 1½ hours and focused almost entirely on trade issues without addressing the war in Ukraine or concerns about Iran’s nuclear technology.

US President Donald Trump and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in Osaka in 2019.Credit: AP

Trump implied there had been a breakthrough in discussions on China’s export controls on rare-earth magnets critical to the automotive, defence and energy industries, which had threatened to derail the truce – something the Chinese side did not mention in its account of the talks.

“I think we’re in very good shape with China and the trade deal,” he said in the Oval Office shortly after the phone call.

“We were straightening out some of the points, having to do mostly with rare earth magnets and some other things.”

He said that US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer would soon lead a delegation to meet top Chinese officials and finalise the details of the agreement.

A meeting between the two leaders is also on the horizon, with Trump saying Xi had invited him and first lady Melania Trump to visit China – an invitation that was confirmed in the Chinese side’s read out of the discussions, though it made no mention of Trump’s reciprocal invite for Xi to visit the US.

“We both accepted, so I will be going there with the first lady at a certain point, and he will be coming here, hopefully, with the first lady of China,” Trump said.

No dates were set for the visits.

Although the Chinese side made no mention of the rare earth issue in its account of the talks, it alluded to the disagreement that had erupted over it. In a statement confirming the phone call, which it said Trump initiated, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said it had been “seriously and earnestly executing the agreement” reached in Geneva, and the US “should remove the negative measures taken against China”.

“Both sides should make good on the agreement reached in Geneva,” the statement said.

Wen-ti Sung, a non-resident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, said Xi gave Trump face to talk up progress on a deal without promising anything in substance, except for a symbolic invitation of a visit to China.

“Washington seems happy to claim that as a win. It shows Washington may be more eager for an off-ramp than Beijing is,” said Sung, also a political scientist at the Australian National University.

China said Xi had also used the talks to deliver a warning to the US on Taiwan to avoid “fringe separatists bent on ‘Taiwan independence’” from dragging China and America into confrontation or conflict.

Following the phone call, Trump appeared to walk back the plan to begin “aggressively” revoking visas issued to Chinese students, announced last week.

“Chinese students are coming. No problem. No problem. It’s our honour to have them”, he said, adding “but we want to check them”.

Under the 90-day trade truce struck in May, the US agreed to temporarily lower its tariffs from 145 per cent to 30 per cent, and China slashed its import duties to 10 per cent, down from 125 per cent, and agreed to remove other trade barriers.

But the agreement appeared on thin ice after Washington accused Beijing of dragging its feet on approving export licences for rare earths, which had sparked frenzied warnings from global automakers of an imminent production shutdown due to critical shortages of the materials used in electric vehicle motors. In retaliation, the US paused sales of chip design software and plane engine parts to China.

For weeks, Trump had signalled his desire to speak directly with Xi, but had grown increasingly despondent, posting on Truth Social one day before the phone call that the Chinese president was “very tough, and extremely hard to make a deal with!!!”

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