US-China Talks Head Into Second Day With Trade, TikTok on Agenda

(Bloomberg) — US and Chinese representatives discussed TikTok, trade and the economy during a day of high-level talks in Madrid, a senior Treasury official said, as diplomacy between the world’s two biggest economies intensifies.

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A US delegation helmed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and a Chinese group led by Vice Premier He Lifeng met for almost six hours on Sunday and will resume meeting Monday morning, the official said.

Included in the agenda are national security issues and the status of ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok, which faces a deadline this week to reach a deal to continue operations in the US. Officials also were expected to lay the groundwork for a potential meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping as soon as October, when they’re scheduled to attend a summit in South Korea.

While the principals broke up for the day, staff member were continuing into the evening, the official said.

“With six weeks left remaining before a possible Trump-Xi meeting around the Korea APEC summit, the US and China must intensify their work if there are to be deliverables,” Wendy Cutler, a senior vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute and veteran US trade negotiator, said ahead of the Madrid talks.

“Given the complexity of the matters facing the two governments to address, combined with a growing confidence by Xi that China holds the upper hand, agreeing on deliverables for a possible Trump-Xi summit will not be easy,” she said.

China’s Ministry of Commerce has said that its delegation will be in Spain from Sept. 14-17. Bessent’s trip is part of a Sept. 12-18 trip that the US official is making to Spain and Britain, where he’s scheduled to meet his counterparts. Trump is set to visit the UK this week as well.

Ahead of the talks on Sunday, China launched two investigations targeting the US semiconductor industry, including an anti-dumping probe relating to certain American-made analog IC chips. The probes came shortly after the US added 23 more China-based companies to its entity list, which imposes restrictions on businesses deemed to be “acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the US.”

–With assistance from Qianwei Zhang, Colum Murphy and Lauren Dezenski.