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Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. (Bonnie Cash/UPI, Oliver Bunic/Bloomberg)

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President Donald Trump said he had made progress with Chinese President Xi Jinping toward finalizing a deal over TikTok and that the two would meet on the sidelines of the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, after a highly anticipated call between the two leaders on Sept. 19.

“I just completed a very productive call with President Xi of China. We made progress on many very important issues including Trade, Fentanyl, the need to bring the War between Russia and Ukraine to an end, and the approval of the TikTok Deal,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Trump said he would meet with Xi at the APEC summit to be held in South Korea starting next month and that he planned to visit China in early 2026, with the Chinese leader in turn visiting the U.S. “at an appropriate time.”

“The call was a very good one, we will be speaking again by phone, appreciate the TikTok approval, and both look forward to meeting at APEC!” Trump added.

🚨 — Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47)

It was unclear what progress the two leaders had made toward resolving the future of TikTok’s US operations. Ahead of the call Trump had said that he expected to reach an agreement on the sale of the U.S. operations of ByteDance Ltd.’s social video app.

A Chinese readout of the call offered a struck a starkly different tone, with Xi urging Trump to avoid restrictive trade measures and to not undermine progress made in earlier talks between the world’s two largest economies aimed at easing tensions.

On TikTok, the readout said only that Xi told Trump that his government respects the wishes of businesses on TikTok and would like to see those companies find a resolution to the issue, according to the note from Beijing’s foreign ministry.

While the Chinese side characterized the talks between the heads of the world’s biggest economies as positive and pragmatic, with Xi expressing confidence that Washington and Beijing could handle issues that arose between their countries, it said Xi also suggested that the U.S. offer a fair environment for Chinese companies to do business, signaling discord over export restrictions and other trade barriers.

The high-stakes call was the first conversation between the leaders since June with the future of TikTok and a possible extension of an ongoing trade deal rolling back some tariffs and export controls high on the agenda. China and the U.S. are locked in a standoff over trade restrictions that have ensnared key industries such as semiconductors and rare earth minerals.

Ahead of their call, Trump had said he expected to reach an agreement on the future of TikTok following talks earlier this week between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in Madrid that yielded a framework agreement for spinning off ByteDance’s US TikTok operations. Details of that framework have yet to be made public and Trump had suggested on Thursday that whether or not the leaders finalized the deal was up to Xi.

Face-to-Face Meeting

In addition to TikTok, the two countries are also wrangling over chipmaker Nvidia Corp.’s access to China, currently hampered by U.S. export controls and Chinese efforts to curb local demand for its products. The US added 32 companies to its entity list in early September, and China responded with��fresh investigations��of American-made chips.

The in-person meeting at APEC will be the first between Trump and Xi since the U.S. president returned to office, and settles an extended back-and-forth around the venue and timing.

In an unusual diplomatic gambit, Trump invited Xi to attend his inauguration in January. The Chinese were instead represented by Vice President Han Zheng, though Xi and Trump spoke by phone before the swearing-in.

During their phone call in June, Xi invited Trump and first lady Melania Trump to visit China and Trump reciprocated by offering a visit to Washington. Trump said at the time that both leaders had accepted the invites, but no meetings materialized.

The in-person sitdown is expected to yield a broader agenda including an expected Chinese order for Boeing Co. planes and potentially deeper discussion of geopolitical issues including Russia’s war in Ukraine, Beijing’s aspirations toward Taiwan as well as joint efforts to curb trafficking of fentanyl and related substances.

“A sideline meeting at APEC summit requires a much lower threshold than a state visit. It appears a grand bargain is not attenable in the near future,” said Neo Wang, lead China macro analyst at Evercore ISI in New York, while also adding that the focus on TikTok “bodes well for the chance that they solve other disputes in future rounds of negotiations.”

Trade Truce

The U.S. and China are in the midst of a détente, until November, of a tariff fight that at one point saw levies from the U.S. surge to as high as 145%. One remaining 20% levy on China is meant as pressure to curb the flow of fentanyl and materials used to produce it.��

Trump on Sept. 18 said that “on a much bigger scale, we’re pretty close to a deal,” but his efforts to use tariffs to negotiate a broader trade agreement with China also could be undercut by a pending U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the legality of some of his levy powers.��

Trump has also called for allies to ramp up penalties on China and India to raise economic pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to bring an end to the war in Ukraine.

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