US President Donald Trump held a long-awaited telephone conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, Chinese media reported.
The call came after a long silence between the leaders, and the difference in how each side talked — or didn’t talk — about the call beforehand just highlighted the growing divide between the world’s two biggest economies. Chinese officials, who deeply feared Trump’s unpredictability, postponed the phone call, according to sources familiar with the situation, despite Trump’s repeated statements in the spring that he hoped to speak with Xi soon, CNN reported before the call. These people added that the president’s ambushes in the Oval Office of Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa caught the attention of officials in China, who wanted to avoid anything similar even in private conversations.
However, Trump considers the conclusion of a new agreement with Beijing to be both an important component of his broader trade agenda and a necessary continuation of his first presidential term, when trade agreements with China were derailed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
