US-China talks head into second day focused on trade, TikTok

Daniel Flatley, Daniel Basteiro and Olivia Tam, Bloomberg News on Sep 14, 2025

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U.S. 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.

A U.S. 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, the official said.

“We’ll start again in the morning,” Bessent said late Sunday as he waved and climbed into an SUV after the meeting.

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 U.S. Officials were also 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.

Trump told reporters later on Sunday that the talks are “going fine,” but said that TikTok’s fate will be determined by Beijing’s actions.

“We may let it die, or we may — I don’t know, it depends. Up to China,” Trump said in New Jersey on his way back to the White House.

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 U.S. official is making to Spain and Britain, where he’s scheduled to meet his counterparts. Trump is set to visit the U.K. this week as well.

While the principals broke up for the day, staff members 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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.

Ahead of the talks on Sunday, China launched two investigations targeting the U.S. semiconductor industry, including an anti-dumping probe relating to certain American-made analog IC chips. The probes came shortly after the U.S. 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 U.S.”

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(With assistance from Qianwei Zhang, Colum Murphy, Lauren Dezenski, Se Young Lee and Hadriana Lowenkron.)