President Trump held a “long and thorough call” on Wednesday with Chinese President Xi Jinping, as Xi carries out a purge of senior military leaders to cement his 13-year grip on power.
“I have just completed an excellent telephone conversation with President Xi, of China. It was a long and thorough call,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, reflecting a continued thaw after last year’s trade war.
Trump said the men discussed “Trade, Military [and] the April trip that I will be making to China (which I very much look forward to!).”
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The conversation also touched on “Taiwan, the War between Russia/Ukraine, the current situation with Iran, the purchase of Oil and Gas by China from the United States” and trade in soybeans and airplane engines, Trump wrote.
“The relationship with China, and my personal relationship with President Xi, is an extremely good one, and we both realize how important it is to keep it that way.”
Trump campaigned for a second term, vowing a tough approach to Beijing, and took office last year, unfurling tariff after tariff to penalize illicit fentanyl shipments and curb state-backed export advantages.
A tit-for-tat escalation concluded in May with an agreement that Trump would lower a towering 145% tariff rate on most Chinese goods and that China would back away from its 125% retaliatory levy.
Trump and Xi met in person in South Korea in October, and the US president agreed to shave another 10% off Chinese tariffs in exchange for the Communist “president for life” agreeing to stomp out fentanyl smuggling, which killed roughly one out of every 1,000 Americans over the preceding five years.
The average US duty on Chinese goods since that meeting has been 47.6% — which is still more than double the 20.7% rate when Trump took office.
As during his first term, Trump has praised Xi in public while attempting to force him into concessions.
Trump has backed away from his campaign-trail calls to “decouple” the US and Chinese economies and to force Xi to pay $60 trillion in reparations for allegedly allowing COVID-19 to escape from a Wuhan lab, causing more than 1 million American deaths.
Asked about Xi’s military leadership purge, Trump told reporters Saturday that “there is one boss in China.”
“I think President Xi is the boss,” Trump said. “I watch it very closely, and he’s highly respected in China. He’s the boss.”
