US President Donald Trump on Monday declared that the high-stakes trade negotiations between Beijing and Washington had wrapped up “VERY WELL” in Madrid, announcing that the talks produced a deal involving TikTok. He added that he is scheduled to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping later this week.
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The upbeat message from the US, however, was accompanied by fresh strains on another technology front, with US semiconductor giant Nvidia caught in the crosshairs of an antitrust investigation by Beijing.
In his signature style, Trump shared the update via a post on Truth Social: “The big Trade Meeting in Europe between The United States of America, and China, has gone VERY WELL! It will be concluding shortly. A deal was also reached on a ‘certain’ company that young people in our Country very much wanted to save. They will be very happy! I will be speaking to President Xi on Friday.”
Scott Bessent, US Treasury Secretary who led the American delegation, told reporters in Madrid that “we have a framework for a Tiktok deal”, referring to the wildly popular social media platform owned by China’s ByteDance.
“The two leaders – President Trump and party chair Xi – will speak on Friday to complete the deal,” he said. “But we do have a framework for a deal with Tiktok. We had very good discussions. We preferred to keep the discussions on Tiktok. We will be holding trade negotiations in about a month again at a different location.”
Bessent later added that the framework pointed to a “switch to US-controlled ownership”, but refused to “get ahead of the leaders call on Friday. We have a framework, they’ll have to confirm the deal”.