Trump, Xi call scheduled for 9am Washington time on Friday

Kate Sullivan, Bloomberg News on Sep 18, 2025

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President Donald Trump’s call with Chinese President Xi Jinping is slated to take place on Friday at 9 a.m. Washington time, according to a U.S. official.

The call will be the first direct engagement between the leaders of the world’s largest economies since June, with the future of ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok app and a tariff truce between Washington and Beijing high on the agenda.

The call is a watershed moment for both sides, and will be watched closely for any indication on whether Trump and Xi agree to hold their first in-person meeting since the U.S. president returned to office.

Negotiators from the two countries reached a framework deal earlier this week to preserve the U.S. operations of TikTok under a national security law.

Under the arrangement, the U.S. operations would be acquired by a consortium that includes Oracle Corp., Andreessen Horowitz and private equity firm Silver Lake Management LLC, according to people familiar with the matter, but the full scope of the plan is not clear and officials have said that Trump and Xi will need to finalize it during their conversation.

Trump has said the U.S. arm could be worth tens of billions of dollars. “I hate to see value like that thrown out the window,” he said Tuesday in Washington before departing to the U.K.

Friday’s call also comes amid a detente between Washington and Beijing that saw the countries claw back spiraling tit-for-tat tariffs imposed earlier this year that spooked markets and raised worries of a global downturn. The current 90-day pause, following prior extensions, is set to run into early November.

Chinese actions targeting chipmaker Nvidia Corp. are also a lingering issue between Washington and Beijing. Chinese authorities this month released the results of a preliminary investigation that found Nvidia had violated anti-monopoly laws after the acquisition of networking gear maker Mellanox Technologies Ltd. U.S. officials expressed their dismay over the development during the talks with Chinese negotiators this week.

Trump, meanwhile, has struck a deal with Nvidia to allow shipments of certain chips to China if the U.S. government received a 15% stake of sales.

Other issues that could arise during the discussions, include export controls over rare earth minerals that are critical to cutting-edge U.S. tech firms as well as a potential Chinese order for Boeing Co. jets.

Still, as the truce holds, Trump has called for allies to ramp up sanctions on China and India over the countries’ purchases of Russian energy, a bid to raise economic pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin and bring his war on Ukraine to an end.