Big Tech Meeting Sets Stage for U.S.-China Talks

The U.S. and China are moving closer to their first trade negotiations in months, with a meeting between tech chief executives and President Donald Trump, according to Bloomberg. The meeting marks another step toward easing a ban on sales to China’s Huawei.

The White House invited many of the U.S.’s biggest technology companies to discuss economic issues including a possible resumption of sales to Huawei. Trump and senior administration officials met with CEOs from Google, Broadcom, Cisco, Intel, Micron, Western Digital and Qualcomm, according to White House spokesman Judd Deere.

“The CEOs expressed strong support of the president’s policies, including national security restrictions on United States telecom equipment purchases and sales to Huawei,“ Deere said. “They requested timely licensing decisions from the Department of Commerce, and the President agreed.“

The meeting between government officials and U.S. technology leaders may assuage Chinese concern that one of its largest technology companies is under existential threat from a blacklisting. But lawmakers and others in the administration who oppose any relief for Huawei could stymie any tentative progress in resolving a trade dispute between the world’s two largest economies.

Chinese state media hailed signs of progress on Huawei as part of what it called efforts to display “sincerity and goodwill’’ by both sides. Any easing of restrictions on Huawei is expected to be met with a resumption of Chinese purchases of U.S. soybeans and other agricultural commodities.

The moves, which followed a meeting between Trump and China’s Xi Jinping in Japan late last month, are meant to clear the way for a trip to China by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin as soon as next week. Such a trip would mark the first high-level negotiating mission to China since talks broke down in May.