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Donald Trump and Xi Jinping have held their first telephone call since the US and Chinese presidents last month agreed a truce in the trade tariff war between the superpowers.
China’s state news agency Xinhua said the leaders discussed a range of issues during the call on Monday, including the development of bilateral relations since their October summit and also the war in Ukraine. It said Xi had stressed the importance of “Taiwan’s return to China”.
A White House official confirmed that Trump and Xi spoke, but did not provide any details about the call. US officials last month said the two leaders did not discuss Taiwan, over which China claims sovereignty, at their summit in the South Korean port city of Busan on October 30.
At the Busan summit, their first in-person encounter since 2019, Trump and Xi reached a one-year truce in the US-China trade war after months of mounting tensions.
China agreed to postpone the introduction of export controls on rare earths and critical minerals that would have a big impact on global supply chains. The US agreed to delay implementation of a measure that would subject thousands of Chinese entities to export controls.
According to Xinhua, Xi on Monday said the Busan meeting had “helped set the course and inject momentum for the steady progress of the ‘giant ship’ of China-US relations”.
Monday’s call comes as the Trump administration debates whether to allow China to buy H200 chips made by Nvidia, a move opposed by some US security officials.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration banned Nvidia from exporting to China the H20, a less powerful chip than its most advanced chips, which was developed to avoid violating US export controls.
Trump reversed course after lobbying from Nvidia, but only after it agreed to give the US government 15 per cent of H20 revenues. But China then told its companies not to buy the H20, partly because it wants to encourage its domestic companies to accelerate innovation.
Nvidia launched the H200 in late 2023, a year after debuting the H100, which quickly became the most coveted chip in Silicon Valley among artificial intelligence researchers. Nvidia has since delivered two substantial upgrades to its flagship AI processors, including its latest B300 “Blackwell” chip, which started shipping in recent months.
Ahead of the meeting with Xi in Busan, Trump had suggested he might allow Nvidia to sell Blackwell chips to China, but US officials later said the issue did not come up in the meeting.
While the H200 is less powerful than the B300, it would be a big step up from the H20. US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick on Monday told Bloomberg Television that Trump would make a decision on the H200 issue after consulting his advisers.
