Donald Trump said he would meet Xi Jinping in South Korea next month and travel to China for a summit early next year, as the two leaders agreed their first meeting since 2019.
In a post on Truth Social after a call between the leaders on Friday, Trump said he and Xi had approved a deal that would enable TikTok to continue operating in the US. Congress last year passed a law requiring ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, to divest the app to avoid a nationwide ban.
“I also agreed with President Xi that we would meet at the Apec Summit in South Korea, that I would go to China in the early part of next year,” Trump wrote, adding that Xi would also visit America at “an appropriate time”.
He said the call, which was only the second between the leaders since Trump returned to the White House in January, was “very productive”.
China’s Xinhua news agency said the call was “positive” but did not confirm that the leaders had struck a deal on TikTok, referring to “consultations between the two teams to properly resolve the TikTok issue”.
Trump said they had also made progress on issues ranging from trade and fentanyl to the need to end the war in Ukraine.
The Financial Times reported last week that China had issued a formal invitation for Trump to meet Xi in Beijing, but the White House had not responded as the two sides remained far apart in talks to resolve their trade war and tackle the flow of fentanyl ingredients from China.
One person familiar with the talks between Washington and Beijing said US officials had been urging Trump to meet Xi at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) forum on October 31 instead of visiting China this year. Trump and Xi last met in 2019 at the G20 in Osaka.
The US officials pushing for a meeting at Apec were concerned that the two sides would not reach a trade deal in time to justify Trump visiting Beijing.
Companies and officials around the world have been watching closely for signs that Trump and Xi would meet and resolve the trade war that roiled markets earlier this year.
Washington imposed 145 per cent tariffs on Chinese goods and Beijing retaliated with a 125 per cent levy on imports from the US before the two sides agreed to suspend such measures.
Trump’s comment on TikTok comes four days after US and Chinese officials held talks in Madrid that Treasury secretary Scott Bessent said produced a “framework” deal on TikTok that Trump and Xi would discuss in their call.
TikTok had faced a nationwide ban in the US after Congress passed legislation last year requiring its Chinese owner ByteDance to divest its American operations due to national security concerns.
“I like TikTok,” Trump said on Thursday. “It helped get me elected.”
In a post on X following the two leaders’ call, Xie Feng, the Chinese ambassador to the US, said Xi had told Trump that Beijing’s position on TikTok was “clear”.
“The Chinese government respects the wishes of the company in question,” said Xie, who added that Beijing “would be happy to see productive commercial negotiations in keeping with market rules lead to a solution that complies with China’s laws and regulations”.
Xi had also made clear that the US “needs to provide an open, fair and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese investors”, the ambassador said.
Craig Singleton, a China expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that Washington and Beijing appeared to have different views on the status of the TikTok deal.
“Competing narratives matter, and the readouts point to duelling deciders on TikTok,” Singleton said. “Beijing frames market-based talks under Chinese law, keeping a de facto veto, while Trump casts himself as the final approver. With the divestment deadline now pushed to December, this looks more like optics than outcomes.”
Speaking in the Oval Office later on Friday, Trump repeated that his claim that the two presidents had “approved” a TikTok deal, but then suggested that the deal with US investors had not yet closed.
“We’re in the process, we have some great investors, big, some of the biggest in the world, American investors, great people, and we look forward to getting that deal closed,” Trump said. “We have to get it signed. I guess it could be a formality . . . The TikTok deal is well on its way, as you know, and the investors are getting ready.”
Ahead of a previous April deadline, the White House was close to an agreement that would have spun off US TikTok into a company receiving new investment, potentially diluting the stakes of Chinese investors.
Under the terms of that deal, investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and Silver Lake, would have owned about half of TikTok’s US business, while large existing investors, including General Atlantic, Susquehanna and KKR, would have held about 30 per cent of the new entity.
