Trump to meet Xi at APEC, says China ‘approved’ TikTok deal

Josh Wingrove and Kate Sullivan

(Bloomberg) — US President Donald Trump said he would meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and hailed progress toward finalizing a deal over TikTok, after a highly anticipated call on Friday.

The in-person meeting would be the first between the leaders of the world’s two largest economies since the US president returned to office, and settles an extended back-and-forth between Washington and Beijing around the venue and timing. The APEC summit is slated to be held in South Korea next month.

“I just completed a very productive call with President Xi of China. 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 on Truth Social.

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The Chinese side characterized the talks between the heads of the world’s biggest economies as positive and pragmatic, with Xi expressing confidence that Washington and Beijing could handle issues that arose between their countries. But it added that Xi also suggested that the US offer a fair environment for Chinese companies to do business, signaling discord over export restrictions and other trade barriers.

Xi urged Trump to avoid restrictive trade measures and to not undermine progress made in earlier talks aimed at easing tensions between their economies, according to the readout, adding the Chinese leader called for “fair and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese enterprises to invest in the country.”

Trump said he also planned to visit China in early 2026, with the Chinese leader in turn visiting the US “at an appropriate time.”

“The call was a very good one, we will be speaking again by phone, appreciate the TikTok approval, and both look forward to meeting at APEC!” Trump added.

Friday’s high-stakes call was the first conversation between the leaders since June with the future of TikTok and a possible extension of an ongoing trade deal rolling back some tariffs and export controls high on the agenda. China and the US are also locked in a standoff over trade restrictions that have ensnared key industries such as semiconductors and rare earth minerals.

Tensions appeared to flare earlier this month when Trump bristled at Xi hosting foreign leaders for a major military parade in Beijing, with the US president on social media offering his “warmest regards” as “you conspire against The United States of America.” Trump also said Xi should have credited the US for “helping China to gain its freedom” during World War II.

Xi in their call told Trump that the Chinese people would not forget US support during World War II in the fight against Japan, according to the Chinese readout.

Ahead of the call Trump had said that he expected to finalize an agreement on the sale of the US operations of ByteDance Ltd.’s social video app. Trump in the Oval Office later Friday told reporters that Xi had “approved the TikTok deal,” but added that it still needed to be “signed.”

“We look forward to getting that deal closed,” Trump added. “The TikTok deal is well on its way as you know.”

The president said investors were preparing to finalize the deal and when asked about whether China would have control over the algorithm, responded that the US would retain “very tight control” over the app.

On TikTok, the Chinese readout said only that Xi told Trump that his government respects the wishes of businesses on TikTok and would like to see those companies find a resolution to the issue, according to the note from Beijing’s foreign ministry.

Earlier: TikTok, Rare Earths, Taiwan: Trump-Xi Call to Run the Gamut

TikTok Framework

Talks earlier this week between US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in Madrid yielded a framework agreement for spinning off ByteDance’s US TikTok operations. Details of that framework have yet to be made public and Trump had suggested on Thursday that whether or not it was finalized was up to Xi. Trump has extended the deadline for TikTok’s divestiture until Dec. 16.

The as-yet unannounced TikTok arrangement would see ByteDance hold no more than 20%, while the other investors include Oracle Corp., Andreessen Horowitz and private equity firm Silver Lake Management LLC, according to people familiar with the matter. Trump said this week that it would be “owned by all-American investors” and “companies that love America” but sidestepped a question about whether the app would require a new algorithm.

Trump’s interest in wielding his transactional diplomacy to notch a TikTok deal has drowned out any lingering national security concerns that had underpinned the bipartisan law that initially set a January deadline for divestiture. The president has signed several executive orders extending the law’s deadline — though his legal footing for flouting the law and allowing the app to continue operating is not fully clear.

Trump was once a critic of TikTok but has shifted his views of the app, crediting it with helping him make gains among young voters in last year’s election.

In addition to TikTok, the two countries are also wrangling over chipmaker Nvidia Corp.’s access to China, currently hampered by US export controls and Chinese efforts to curb local demand for its products. The US added 32 companies to its entity list in early September, and China responded with fresh investigations of American-made chips.

In an unusual diplomatic gambit, Trump invited Xi to attend his inauguration in January. The Chinese were instead represented by Vice President Han Zheng, though Xi and Trump spoke by phone before the swearing-in.

During their phone call in June, Xi invited Trump and first lady Melania Trump to visit China and the US president reciprocated by offering a visit to Washington. Trump said at the time that both leaders had accepted the invites, but no meetings materialized.

The in-person sitdown is expected to yield a broader agenda including an expected Chinese order for Boeing Co. planes and potentially deeper discussion of geopolitical issues including Russia’s war in Ukraine, Beijing’s aspirations toward Taiwan as well as joint efforts to curb trafficking of fentanyl and related substances.

“A sideline meeting at APEC summit requires a much lower threshold than a state visit. It appears a grand bargain is not attenable in the near future,” said Neo Wang, lead China macro analyst at Evercore ISI in New York, while also adding that the focus on TikTok “bodes well for the chance that they solve other disputes in future rounds of negotiations.”

Trade Truce

The US and China are in the midst of a détente, until November, of a tariff fight that at one point saw levies from the US surge to as high as 145%. One remaining 20% levy on China is meant as pressure to curb the flow of fentanyl and materials used to produce it.

Trump on Thursday said that “on a much bigger scale, we’re pretty close to a deal,” but his efforts to use tariffs to negotiate a broader trade agreement with China also could be undercut by a pending US Supreme Court ruling on the legality of some of his levy powers.

The US president has also called for allies to ramp up penalties on China and India to raise economic pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to bring an end to the war in Ukraine.

–With assistance from Jacob Gu, Josh Xiao, Natalia Drozdiak and Lauren Dezenski.

(Updates with Xi comments from readout from paragraph five)

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