Name: Donald Trump and Xi Jinping hold 90 minute phone call | BBC News
Uploaded: 2025-06-06T02:55:43.000Z
Duration: 3 min 20 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Future simple

We're going to start with news that US President Donald Trump and uh Chinese teams will meet shortly.

Modal verbs - A2

After he and the Chinese leader Xi Jinping discussed trade in a phone call earlier on Thursday, adding that there should be no longer any questions on rare earth products.

Now, you may know, China dominates the trade in rare earths, they're vital in the production of electronics and cars amongst a whole host of other things.

Now, the conversation was focused almost entirely on trade, nothing was discussed concerning Russia, Ukraine or Iran.

That's what President Trump wrote on social media, adding that the two leaders had invited each other to their respective countries for visits.

So let's get the thoughts now of Aaron Delmore who's in New York for us.

And Aaron, give us a sense here of how important this call was and what we seem to get a sense of about, you know, that rare earth issue is such an important one and if there is any breakthrough there, that would be quite a moment, wouldn't it?

It absolutely would be, it's one of the chief concerns here in the US China relationship.

And Ben, when you talk about how important this call is, well, certainly it's important to investors and to business leaders who are eager for some kind of stability in this US China trade relationship.

Amid all of the upheaval that we've seen in recent months, and it also seems to be very important to President Trump.

He said quite a few times and even intimated in April that the two had spoken, uh but largely he's been saying that he's been eager for a phone call with President Xi.

And the Chinese side did make it clear today that the call had happened at President Trump's request.

Now, while President Trump said that there should be no questions further surrounding rare earth metals, the social media post that he put up itself doesn't have a lot of detail to it.

We don't know what was progressed or what was agreed upon in this phone call, but what we do know is that the two sides plan to meet according to President Trump and that he plans to send Howard Lutnick, Jameson Greer and Scott Bessent, his three closest and top economic advisors to those talks.

He also spoke about a friendly relationship with President Xi.

said that the president had extended an invitation for him and the first lady to come to China and that he reciprocated and he called them leaders of two great nations.

Yeah, and Aaron, that would be quite a moment too, wouldn't it, because, you know, the two countries have been, let's say at loggerheads, particularly about things like trade.

We know that the White House had slapped massive tariffs on Chinese made products being imported into the United States.

It feels like there is some sort of thawing in that relationship.

albeit maybe just a diplomatic one right now.

I think they would take even that opening, Ben.

I mean, we're seeing some of this tension spill over into other issues as well, for instance, about Chinese student visas here in the United States.

And this is really why we tend to call things a trade war.

You know, an escalation on the front, there's always this idea that if you don't have these kinds of diplomatic moments of coming together, things could escalate further.

And that has definitely been the fears among some business owners here in the United States, especially ones that rely on China not only for finished goods, but for component goods to then make into finished goods for sale here in the United States.

So when we talk about where we were just about a month and a half ago with these triple digit tariffs on Chinese goods imported into the US, well, a lot of what is to come is being negotiated at the moment.

And a lot of folks are eager for something permanent and something lower that they can plan their businesses around.