BEIJING/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday held talks with U.S. President Donald Trump by phone, China’s state-run news agency Xinhua reported, as bilateral relations have been strained by trade disputes.
The phone talks were at Trump’s request, Xinhua said, without providing further details about the leaders’ conversation.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The highly anticipated call comes amid accusations between Washington and Beijing in recent weeks over critical minerals in a dispute that threatens to tear up a fragile truce in the trade war between the two biggest economies.
The countries struck a 90-day deal on May 12 to roll back some of the triple-digit, tit-for-tat tariffs they had placed on each other since Trump’s January inauguration.
Though stocks rallied, the temporary deal did not address broader concerns that strain the bilateral relationship, from the illicit fentanyl trade to the status of democratically governed Taiwan and U.S. complaints about China’s state-dominated, export-driven economic model.
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has repeatedly threatened an array of punitive measures on trading partners, only to revoke some of them at the last minute. The on-again, off-again approach has baffled world leaders and spooked business executives, who say the uncertainty has made it difficult to forecast market conditions.
China’s decision in April to suspend exports of a wide range of critical minerals and magnets continues to disrupt supplies needed by automakers, computer chip manufacturers and military contractors around the world.
Beijing sees mineral exports as a source of leverage – halting those exports could put domestic political pressure on the Republican U.S. president if economic growth sags because companies cannot produce mineral-powered products.
The 90-day deal to roll back tariffs and trade restrictions is tenuous. Trump has accused China of violating the agreement and has ordered curbs on chip design software and other shipments to China. Beijing rejected the claim and threatened counter-measures.
Trump has long pushed for a call or a meeting with Xi, but China has rejected that as not in keeping with its traditional approach of working out agreement details before the leaders talk.
The U.S. president and his aides see leader-to-leader talks as vital to sort through log-jams that have vexed lower-level officials in difficult negotiations.
It’s not known when the two men last spoke.
The talks are being closely watched by investors worried that a chaotic trade war could cut into corporate earnings and disrupt supply chains in the key months before the Christmas holiday shopping season. Trump’s tariffs are also the subject of ongoing litigation in U.S. courts.
(Reporting by Xiuhao Chen, Yukun Zhang and Ryan Woo in Beijing; Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington; editing by Philippa Fletcher, Chizu Nomiyama and Franklin Paul)
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