US President Donald Trump hoped to finalize the fate of video-sharing app TikTok and make progress on trade talks in a phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday.
“I’m speaking with President Xi, as you know, on Friday, having to do with TikTok, and also trade,” Trump said on Thursday. “And we’re very close to deals on all of it. And my relationship with China is very good.”
International Crisis Group US-China relations expert Ali Wyne said that “each leader will aim to signal that he has outmaneuvered the other” in trade talks focused on tariffs.
Photo: AFP
The pair could settle the TikTok drama, after Trump repeatedly put off a ban to force Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell its US operations for national security reasons.
Under the deal, TikTok’s US business would be “owned by all American investors, and very rich people and companies,” Trump said.
He said he believes TikTok had boosted his appeal to younger voters and helped him win last year’s election.
The president on Tuesday again pushed back applying a ban on the app, which had been decided under former US president Joe Biden.
The Wall Street Journal raised the possibility of a consortium to control TikTok that would include tech giant Oracle and two California investment funds — Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz.
The telephone talks come as the world’s two biggest economies seek to find a compromise on tariffs.
Both sides dramatically hiked tariffs against each other during a months-long dispute earlier this year, disrupting global supply chains.
Washington and Beijing then reached a deal to reduce levies, which expires in November, with the US imposing 30 percent duties on imports of Chinese goods and China hitting US products with a 10 percent tariff.
Trump and Xi were still talking as of press time last night.
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