Could TikTok Help Bring Trump and Xi Together?

Trade thaw?

Relations between Washington and Beijing appeared to hit a new low this month when President Trump grumbled about “deepest, darkest, China” extending its sphere of global influence.

So it came as something of a surprise on Monday when Trump delivered an upbeat assessment about U.S.-China trade talks that took place in Madrid, including hinting at progress toward a deal over TikTok. He also shared warm words for his counterpart, President Xi Jinping of China, with whom he plans to speak on Friday. “The relationship remains a very strong one!!!,” he wrote on social media.

Global markets rallied on his post, as investors hope that the two powers can reach a détente.

(Another promising development: U.S.-India trade negotiations resumed on Tuesday in New Delhi.)

There’s a lot to work out with China. Take TikTok. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced on Monday that negotiators had reached “a framework for a deal” on the app, whose future has been in limbo for months as Washington pushed ByteDance, its parent company, to sell its U.S. operation to American investors.

But no details were given. And we’ve heard about progress toward an agreement again, again and again.

The clock is ticking. A ban of TikTok in the U.S. is set to go into effect this week — unless the White House intervenes once more.

On trade: The pause on sky-high reciprocal tariffs is scheduled to expire in November if Washington and Beijing do not extend it.

Both countries have intensifying reasons to reach an accord. Inflation is rising in the U.S., and economists fear that a full-fledged trade war could sap households’ spending power.

China’s economic slowdown deepened in August, data released on Monday showed. Exports to the U.S. have fallen off drastically. Even still, Beijing has taken a deliberate approach to negotiations with Washington while deepening ties with other countries, including Brazil.

Still, there’s a sense that there’s a heightened will to reach a deal. Pressure is growing for Trump and Xi to meet in person, something seen as key to achieving a permanent truce. The Wall Street Journal reports that this is what is driving the TikTok development — that it’s a carrot to get Trump to visit China.

There’s also speculation that the two leaders could meet in South Korea, as they are both scheduled to attend a summit that begins there next month.

• In related news: Shares in Nvidia fell on Monday after Chinese regulators said the chipmaker had violated the country’s antitrust laws. The announcement broke during trade talks; Bessent acknowledged that it was “poor timing.”

HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING

President Trump notched a win and a loss in his Fed fight. The Senate approved Stephen Miran, one of his close economic advisers, as a governor for a temporary period — and in time for a crucial vote this week on interest rates. But an appeals court ruled that Lisa Cook, the Fed governor whom Trump has sought to fire over accusations of mortgage fraud, could remain in place and also vote at the meeting.

Gold hits a record as investors brace for a Fed rate cut. The precious metal traded near $3,700 an ounce on Tuesday, a rally driven in part by investor concerns about Trump’s assault on Fed independence and wider fears over ballooning deficit spending.

Alphabet joins the $3 trillion valuation club. Google’s parent company is the fourth publicly traded U.S. business to do so; its shares have skyrocketed over 70 percent since April as investors pour money into companies at the forefront of the artificial intelligence boom. Relatedly, Google said it would invest 5 billion pounds ($6.8 billion) over the next two years to bolster Britain’s A.I. sector, one of many business deals that are expected to coincide with Trump’s U.K. state visit this week.

A hazier future for quarterly earnings reports

President Trump has again raised an idea that many corporate bosses have demanded for years — and this time, he might get his way.

The S.E.C. said that it was “prioritizing” Trump’s proposal to move companies away from a quarterly reporting schedule and toward a six-month one. The question is how much pushback such a move might generate this time, Niko Gallogly writes.

It’s Trump’s second effort to make this change. In 2018, he said that he had asked the S.E.C. to study requiring companies to move to a twice-a-year reporting schedule, saying it “would allow greater flexibility & save money.”

Scores of responses came in. But the effort ultimately petered out.

Trump is more likely to get his way this time, experts say. That’s because of “deregulatory momentum at the S.E.C. and across the administration,” Adam Fleisher, a partner at the law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, told DealBook. He pointed to a recent S.E.C. review of compensation disclosure rules for executives and to the president’s executive order in August clearing the way for retirement plans to invest in alternative assets like private equity.

Jaret Seiberg, an analyst at TD Cowen, agreed that a deregulation-friendly Trump administration assigned a 60 percent probability of such a change happening.

For its part, the S.E.C. said Trump’s proposal could “further eliminate unnecessary regulatory burdens on companies.”

Getting rid of short-term thinking is an idea with widespread support. In a 2016 letter to investors, Larry Fink of BlackRock denounced “today’s culture of quarterly earnings hysteria.” And Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway wrote in a 2018 opinion essay in The Wall Street Journal that companies should reconsider providing quarterly earnings-per-share guidance.

Others have argued that the burden of frequent reporting has helped lead to a sharp drop in the number of publicly listed companies, depriving ordinary investors of potential financial gains.

Several European markets have done away with requiring quarterly updates, though some companies with major U.S. shareholders have continued that cadence.

But others caution against going too far. That includes Fink, who wrote in the 2016 letter that “‘long-termism’ should not be a substitute for transparency,” and Dimon and Buffett, who wrote in their essay that “transparency about financial and operating results is an essential aspect of U.S. public markets.”

While agreeing that short-termism is a problem, many critics of scrapping quarterly earnings reports say that companies should instead tie executive compensation to longer earnings horizons.

What may come next: Many investors, including large institutions that themselves must frequently update their own stakeholders, are likely to push back.

And even if the S.E.C. approves the change, many publicly traded companies may continue to report quarterly in a nod to shareholders’ wishes.

“C.E.O.s that 60 years ago might have been making four to six times more than what the workers are receiving — the last figure I saw, it’s 600 times more than what average workers are receiving.”

— Pope Leo XIV. In a wide-ranging interview with Crux, the American-born pontiff criticized ballooning executive pay. Of Tesla’s proposed trillion-dollar pay package for Elon Musk, Leo said, “If that is the only thing that has value anymore, then we’re in big trouble.”

The thorny back story to a blockbuster chips deal

Many in Washington and in Silicon Valley were stunned this year when the Trump administration allowed the sale of advanced artificial intelligence chips to the United Arab Emirates, giving the country access to some of the world’s most desired technology.

Behind the transaction, according to an investigation by The Times, is a tale interwoven with concerns about conflicts of interest, questions of national security and the intervention of the right-wing activist Laura Loomer.

The chip deal was pushed by Steve Witkoff, the New York real estate developer turned Trump envoy to the Middle East, who, as The Times notes, had secured significant backing from the Emiratis for his business. Witkoff’s son Zach is also involved in one of the Trump family’s big crypto enterprises, which in May secured a $2 billion investment from a firm linked to an Emirati leader. (There’s no evidence the two transactions are connected.)

More from The Times’s investigation into the chips deal:

The sheikh wanted an export policy that would give the U.A.E. more access to the most advanced American-designed A.I. chips.

Several administration officials, including members of the National Security Council, preferred to tighten export rules, primarily to prevent China’s access to the chips. One of them was David Feith, who had served in the State Department during Mr. Trump’s first term and helped shape the administration’s aggressive stance on China.

Mr. Feith, who had returned in the second term as senior director for technology on the National Security Council, pushed what he and colleagues called the “America First” A.I. chips plan. It would restrict foreign access to the most advanced chips for at least a year, in conflict with Sheikh Tahnoon’s demands.

But in early April, not long after Sheikh Tahnoon’s visit to Washington, Mr. Trump fired six security council officials, including Mr. Feith. The dismissals came after a roughly 30-minute meeting between Mr. Trump and Ms. Loomer.

Ms. Loomer said her opposition to Mr. Feith had to do, in part, with his father’s political views when he was serving in the administration of President George W. Bush. She said it did not pertain to the chips negotiations.

Feith’s departure helped cleared the way for David Sacks, the administration’s A.I. czar, to take a leading role in the talks. Some U.S. negotiators believed that it was improper for Sacks, a working venture capitalist, to work on deals that could benefit his industry and investors in his company, The Times reports.