Trump and Xi hold long-awaited trade call

President Donald Trump held a long-awaited phone call Thursday with China’s Xi Jinping, a person familiar with the matter said, as the two leaders tussle over trade policy.

President Donald Trump held a long-awaited phone call Thursday with China’s Xi Jinping, a person familiar with the matter said, as the two leaders tussle over trade policy. The White House did not immediately confirm the call, which was also reported by Chinese state media. The call comes after a long period of silence between the leaders, and the discrepancy in how each side was talking — or not talking — about the call ahead of time only underscored a widening gulf between the world’s two largest economies. As CNN reported ahead of the call, Chinese officials — who were deeply wary of Trump’s unpredictability and track record of putting foreign leaders in awkward or embarrassing situations — had put off a phone call, according to people familiar, even as Trump stated on multiple occasions this spring that he expected to speak with Xi soon. The presiden’s Oval Office ambushes of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa caught the attention of officials in China, those people added, and officials wanted to avoid anything similar, even in a private conversation. But Trump regards securing a new agreement with Beijing both as a critical component of his broader trade agenda and as a necessary follow-up from his first term, when trade deals with China got derailed during the Covid-19 pandemic.