MSC, the largest ocean carrier in the world, has joined the list of ocean carriers terminating the delivery of diverted containers outside of the port for shipping clients as a result of the container ship accident near the Port of Baltimore that led to the tragic bridge collapse. With the Baltimore port indefinitely closed, the decision places the onus of cargo pick up at a diverted port and transport to its final destination on the shipper.

In an email to customers obtained by CNBC on Thursday, MSC explained that for customer containers already on the water bound for the Port of Baltimore, cargo will be rerouted and discharged at an alternate port where it will be made available for pick-up.

“For these shipments, the contract of carriage will be declared terminated at this alternate port and storage, D&Ds and on-carriage costs to the initially intended destination will be for the sole cargo’s account,” the MSC advisory said.

MSC added that “passage to and from Baltimore is at this time impossible and will not be reestablished for several weeks if not months.”

CMA CGM, COSCO, and Evergreen were the first carriers to announce similar moves and in some cases formally declare “force majeure,” a legal term which refers to the right to waive contract duties when events beyond a party’s control occur.

MSC said in its customer communication that it “apologizes for the disruption caused by this contingency plan which is required in response to events beyond our control, but which is taken in compliance with the terms of the contract of carriage.”

MSC did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Maersk is the only major carrier to say it will provide transport from diverted ports for customers. 

Maersk was the charter of the Dali, 10,000-container capacity containership that lost control and crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in the early hours of Tuesday.

After the pandemic boom which led to historic profits, ocean carriers have been through a period of financial and operational challenges, with vessel overcapacity, declining earnings, and the Red Sea Houthi attacks and Panama Canal drought leading to costly diversions from major global trade routes.

Logistics companies have been scrambling since the accident to make alternate transport plans and keep up with carrier diversions, and executives told CNBC on Wednesday that the next few days will be critical in the movement of the diverted trade away from the Port of Baltimore.

The Port of Baltimore, the nation’s eleventh-largest port, is No. 1 in the U.S for auto/light truck and agriculture tractor imports and exports, in addition to handling clothing, household goods, construction materials, electronics and appliances, and produce.

Among the unresolved issues, logistics executives have cited ocean carriers not updating their vessel transits fast enough to alert them to the new diverted port so they can plan for their customer’s container pick-up.

Major ports up and down the East Coast, including Savannah, Brunswick, Virginia, Charleston, and New York/New Jersey, as well as the companies providing chassis for rail and truck transport, have told CNBC they have the capacity to ramp up operations to meet the needs of incoming cargo.

In a series of updates, MSC sent a list of 23 vessels arriving to the diverted ports from March 28-April 29. Eight have an unknown diverted port, 11 are headed to the Port of New York/New Jersey; three to Norfolk; and one to Philadelphia.

On Thursday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg had a meeting with supply chain professionals about the crisis and how to mitigate any congestion. The meeting included ocean carriers CMA CGM, Maersk, MSC, Evergreen, and railroads CSX and Norfolk Southern. The Port of New York/New Jersey, Georgia, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Jacksonville, South Carolina and Virginia were also in attendance. Shipping clients at the meeting included John Deere, Stellantis, Home Depot, Under Armour, and Volkswagen.

“We are much better equipped to mitigate supply chain disruptions than we were just a few years ago, thanks to increased coordination across the supply chain and new efforts to strengthen both our physical and digital infrastructure,” Buttigieg said, according to a readout from the meeting.

National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard, who was also in attendance, noted that in previous disruptions, the lack of complete information across different components of the private sector and the public sector hampered the decision-making capabilities and responses. She cited the recent DOT FLOW initiative as a difference maker. “It has already been activated to bring the full capacity of all the agencies in the federal government to make sure that we’re helping ocean carriers, port leaders, railroads, shippers, and unions to all come together to assess potential supply chain impacts and then work together to address them.”  

Paul Brashier, vice president of drayage and intermodal at ITS Logistics, said the greatest challenges may be experienced by smaller companies that coordinate the bookings themselves and may not have relationships at these diverted ports. “You want to get your diverted container out of the port as soon as possible so you don’t incur any detention and demurrage fees. For some of these shippers they are starting from scratch,” Brashier said.

Once a container arrives at a terminal, the clock begins ticking on the free time allocated to a container. Once that free time expires, detention and demurrage fees start unless ports agree to waive them.

“We are looking to see if terminals will either give an extension of free time or waive the fees,” Brashier told CNBC on Wednesday. “That’s the rub right now.”

The global economy does not need a “collapse” in order to bring inflation back to target and return to sustainable growth, according to Steven Wieting, chief investment strategist and chief economist at Citi Global Wealth.

Major economies have proven surprisingly resilient to sharp interest rate increases from central banks over the last two years. This has been particularly evident in the U.S., with recession thus far avoided and the labor market remaining robust.

Talk has now turned to rate cuts as inflation remains on a downward trajectory toward central banks’ targets, while growth has slowed.

Wieting told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Monday that he is optimistic the global economy does not need an “economic collapse” to rein in inflation.

“We had one massive shock — one pandemic, one collapse. We didn’t need two recessions to ultimately cure our inflation problem,” he said.

“It’s holding down parts of our economy now — manufacturing and trade declines are happening around the world — but these are likely to bottom within the year.”

U.S. headline inflation came in at an annual 3.4% year-on-year in December, remaining above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target but down considerably from a peak of 9.1% in June 2022.

Investors will be closely watching Friday’s personal consumption expenditure (PCE) inflation figure, the Fed’s preferred metric, for further clues as to when the central bank will begin cutting rates.

Meanwhile, a preliminary estimate of fourth-quarter GDP is scheduled for Thursday, with the economy expected to have grown by 1.7%, its lowest rate since the 0.6% decline in the second quarter of 2022.

“This period of slower global growth and slowing employment growth in the United States we think can pass and lead to a healthier growth period if we take a look particularly at the next year and beyond, and that’s this year’s business for investors,” Wieting said.

He highlighted that while there is excess that needs to be worked out of the economy, this was not the result of a “true overheating” or prolonged “boom,” but instead of excess government fiscal stimulus related to the pandemic recovery that wasn’t going to be repeated.

“If you take a look at money supply in the United States, it declined 4% over the past year. Take a look at the 1970s, it was almost 10% growth for the entire decade, important prices surging 14% every single year — that’s … sustained inflation,” Wieting said.

“This story with just all of this government spending coming and going — upheaval in supply and demand, consumer spending going up or down 30% between goods and services, during the pandemic period — that’s not the environment we’re in any longer.”

Smartphones. Cars. Toasters. Fighter jets. While vastly different on the outside, all four items share something similar on the inside: semiconductors.

“There’s no tech industry without semiconductors,” said Stacy Rasgon, senior semiconductor analyst at Bernstein Research.

Semiconductors represent a $574 billion industry globally and are on pace to cross the trillion-dollar mark by the end of the decade. The industry has been caught in the crosshairs between the U.S. and China, two of the world’s largest economies.

The U.S., which leads the world in global semiconductor market share, recently issued sweeping restrictions on the sale of advanced chips and chipmaking equipment to China, in an attempt to restrict Beijing’s access to critical technologies. The Biden administration has said the export controls are aimed in part at preventing the use of American-made chips in China’s military. China, meanwhile, has accused the U.S. of abusing export restrictions to impede the country’s technological advances.

“We cannot allow China to have our most sophisticated semiconductor chips for use in the Chinese military,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said in an interview with CNBC on Oct. 30, 2023. “That’s where we’ve drawn the cut line.”

Watch the video above to find out more about how the semiconductor industry became the centerpiece of a technological tug-of-war between the U.S. and China, and what the potential implications are for companies caught in the middle of it all.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the value of the semiconductor industry. According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, global semiconductor sales reached $574 billion in 2022.

Tesla faces a growing revolt in Scandinavia after Danish dockworkers joined a sympathy strike with Swedish mechanics, heaping pressure on the electric vehicle giant to grant collective bargaining rights to employees.

Members of Swedish trade union IF Metall have been at loggerheads with Tesla for six weeks, and have garnered support via secondary strike action from fellow workers across a range of industries in Sweden, including postal workers, painters, dockworkers and electricians.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk bemoaned the blockage of license plate deliveries by postal workers as “insane” and late last month filed lawsuits against both the Swedish Transport Agency and the postal service.

After Swedish dockworkers blocked the reception of Tesla cars into the country, there had been speculation that Tesla would seek to deliver cars to Danish ports and transport them by truck across to Sweden.

However, IF Metall requested support from Denmark’s largest trade union, which on Tuesday announced a sympathy strike.

Jan Villadsen, the the chair of Denmark’s 3F Transport union, said Tuesday that IF Metall and Swedish workers are “fighting an incredibly important battle” and therefore have his union’s full support.

“Just like companies, the trade union movement is global in the fight to protect workers. With the sympathy strike, we are now stepping in to put further pressure on Tesla,” Villadsen said in a statement.

“Of course, we hope that they come to the negotiating table as soon as possible and sign a collective agreement.”

In what appeared to be a direct attack on Musk, Villadsen added that “even if you are one of the richest in the world, you can’t just make your own rules.”

“We have some labor market agreements in the Nordic region, and you have to comply with them if you want to run a business here,” he said.

“Solidarity is the cornerstone of the trade union movement and extends across national borders. Therefore, we are now taking the tools we have and using them to ensure collective agreements and fair working conditions.”

All members of 3F Transport are covered by the sympathy conflict, meaning that dockworkers and drivers will not receive and transport Tesla cars to Sweden.

Swedish labor relations, shaped by a series of accords reached throughout the 20th century, mean that almost all pay is subject to collective agreements between companies and labor unions, without any government intervention.

Tesla has so far refused to sign up to one of these collective bargaining agreements, leading around 120 mechanics in Sweden to launch strike action in late October.

The striking workers are not asking for more pay, but simply for Tesla to honor the principle of collective bargaining. The dispute highlights the potential for an ongoing ideological stalemate not just between Tesla and 120 mechanics, but between U.S. corporate power and the deeply entrenched principles underpinning the Scandinavian economic model.

The extension of solidarity strikes to Denmark could signal further problems for Musk amid the risk of similar solidarity action in Norway and Germany, where collective agreements are also a key tenet of labor relations.

IF Metall told CNBC Tuesday that it has no ongoing talks with Tesla but hopes that the U.S. giant will “return to the negotiations table as soon as possible.”

“We are confident that they eventually will realize that collective agreement is beneficial for them as well. We are prepared for a prolonged conflict, but we are hoping for a swift solution,” the union said.

The U.S. economy is “back to normal” for the first time in two decades, but the market is getting ahead of the likely pace of interest rate cuts, according to IBM Vice Chairman Gary Cohn.

The market is narrowly pricing a first rate reduction from the Federal Reserve in May 2024, according to CME Group’s FedWatch tool, with around 100 basis points of cuts expected across the year.

The central bank in September paused its historically aggressive monetary tightening cycle with the Fed funds rate target range at 5.25-5.5%, up from just 0.25-0.5% in March 2022.

Cohn — who was chief economic advisor to former U.S. President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2018 and is a former director of the National Economic Council — does not see the Fed starting to unwind its position until at least the second half of next year, after similar moves from other major central banks that began hiking sooner.

“You don’t want to be early to leave when you’re the last one to come to the party. You have to be the last one to leave the party, so the Fed is going to be the last one to leave this party,” Cohn told CNBC’s Dan Murphy on stage at the Abu Dhabi Finance Week conference on Wednesday.

“The economy will clearly turn down before the Fed had starts to cut interest rates, so I strongly believe that for the first half of ’24, we will see no rate activity in the Fed. Maybe [in the third quarter], we’ll start hearing rumblings of some forward guidance of lower rates.”

The U.S. consumer price index increased 3.2% in October from a year ago, unchanged from the previous month but down considerably from a pandemic-era peak of 9.1% in June 2022.

Despite the sharp rise in interest rates, the U.S. economy has so far remained resilient and avoided a widely predicted recession, fueling bets that the Fed can engineer a fabled “soft landing” by bringing inflation down to its 2% target over the medium term without triggering an economic downturn.

Cohn highlighted that U.S. consumer debt has soared to record highs of over $1 trillion, and that consumer spending is persisting despite tightening financial conditions. He said the consumer and the broader economy is “back to a normal, but we all forgot what normal is.”

“We haven’t seen normal for over two decades. We went through a decade plus of zero interest rates, we went through a decade of quantitative easing, zero interest rates and the Fed trying to see if they could create inflation,” he said.

“We’ve gone from the Fed not being able to create inflation — we now know the answer, the Fed can’t create inflation, but the market can — to us trying to unwind a shorter term inflationary shock. We’re back into a normal world.”

He noted that the 100-year average for 10-year U.S. Treasury yields is around 4.5%, and that the 10-year yield has moderated from the 16-year high of 5% logged in October to around 4.3% as of Wednesday morning. Meanwhile, inflation is “running back towards the mean” of between 2% and 2.5%.

“So every piece of economic data, if you look, is sort of heading back towards its very long term average. If you look at these over 100-year generational cycles, we seem to be running into that phase right now,” Cohn added.

NEW DELHI — The African Union became the second regional grouping to be admitted to the Group of 20 leading industrialized and developing nations as a full permanent member, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced Saturday at the start of the two-day G20 leaders’ summit in Delhi.

The widely-anticipated move underscores India’s wide-ranging agenda to elevate the global multilateral forum’s focus on the Global South in its presidency of the G20 this year. The 55-member bloc of African nations joins the European Union as only the second regional organization to become a permanent member of the G20.

“India’s G20 presidency has become a symbol of inclusion with a spirit of together with all, both within and outside the country,” Modi said in his opening remarks, according to a translation provided by the summit organizers. “It is in the spirit of together with all that India proposed permanent membership for the African Union in the G20.”

With an embrace after the announcement, Modi welcomed AU Chairperson Azali Assoumani and offered him a place at the conference table for permanent members of the G20.

This weekend’s agenda includes expediting climate action, mitigating the impact of geopolitics on food and energy security, the provision of more loans to developing nations by multilateral institutions and reforming the world’s debt architecture as well as an international framework for cryptocurrencies.

“This period in the 21st century is the time to give the world a new direction,” Modi said. “It is a time in which age-old challenges are demanding new solutions from us, and therefore it is with a human-centric approach that we must fulfill each of our responsibilities and move forward.”

At a time of shifting global alliances, India is hoping to persuade the Global South that its deepening strategic partnership with the U.S. offers a more viable alternative from food security to debt resolution.

World leaders present in Delhi this weekend include Brazilian President Lula da Silva, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and U.S. President Joe Biden.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping are conspicuous absentees, with both G20 member states having objected to the wording referring to the war in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and China Premier Li Qiang are representing their respective countries this weekend.

The pair’s absence has sparked fears that a communique binding member states may not be issued at the end of a G20 leaders’ summit — undercutting India’s clout and diminishing his domestic messaging.

“After the Covid pandemic, the world is going through a major crisis, and that is a lack of trust. War has deepened this trust deficit,” Modi said Saturday.

The Ukrainian counteroffensive that launched in June against Moscow’s invasion has run into a Russian wall. 

In the run-up to the Ukrainian push, weapons from Western allies — such as tanks, artillery and other equipment — poured into Ukraine. Despite some small gains, Ukrainian forces have yet to see a large breakthrough, leaving some to wonder what else is needed.

“This is about as hard as it gets,” said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Think World War I with drones. … That’s a little bit what the Ukrainians are facing. And so in our microwave culture here in the United States, we want results yesterday, but that’s just not the way it works when you’re confronting a military like the Russians.”

Land mines have been a massive problem for Kyiv’s forces. Russia has deployed large tracts of the explosive devices, including mines aimed at troops as well as mines that are designed to take out armored vehicles like tanks, slowing down any Ukrainian advance. And with Russia’s ability to lay mines with specialized artillery, keeping cleared lanes open to send forces through has been a struggle.

“Let me be clear, this would present a significant challenge for any force that is trying to take it without the full scope of Western capabilities,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, executive chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator and co-founder of CrowdStrike.

Many in Kyiv have called for the introduction of Western fighter jets, such as the F-16, to beef up the beleaguered Ukrainian Air Force, which has managed to keep flying and fighting despite what on paper is an overwhelming Russian advantage in air power. These fighters would also help take the pressure off of air defense forces, which consists of older Soviet surface-to-air missile systems that are difficult to resupply, and the newly provided Patriot missile system. Just sending F-16s to Ukraine wouldn’t turn the tide overnight. It would take months, if not years, of training to get the most out of these expensive jets.

“These weapons are not silver bullets,” said Mick Ryan, a retired major general of the Australian army and adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “There’s no such thing as a single weapon system that will provide that. It’s when you have lots of different weapons systems in the air on the ground. You have operators who are technically proficient and then you’re able to undertake the collective combined arms training, that’s when you have a really war-winning capability.”

Watch the video above to find out if more big-ticket, U.S.-made weapons such as F-16s, the Patriot missile system and HIMARS can turn the tide in Ukraine.

The U.S. no longer has an inflation problem, according to veteran economist Steve Hanke.

“I think the inflation story is history. One reason for that is that money supply has been contracting on a year-over-year basis by minus 4% in the United States,” Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University, told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Thursday.

“We haven’t seen that since 1938,” Hanke said. “Money supply changes cause changes in the price index and inflation.” 

U.S. inflation rate for June came in lower than expected at 3% on Wednesday, the smallest year-on-year increase in two years. The core consumer price index, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, rose 4.8% from a year ago and 0.2% month-on-month.  

The latest data could give the Federal Reserve some wiggle room as the central bank navigates its interest rates policy direction.

U.S. producer price index is due later Thursday. If it also shows prices falling that could further influence the Fed’s decision to end the rate hiking cycle soon.

Traders are betting there’s a 92.4% chance that the Fed will keep rates unchanged at its July meeting, according to the CME FedWatch tool. 

“When inflation was going and roaring, the producer price index roared up first and then the consumer price index roared up. And then finally the core gradually like a snail went up,” said Hanke. 

“Now, we’ve turned the thing around and the producer price indexes are falling like a stone. The consumer price index, it’s falling pretty much like a stone. And the core is lagging way behind,” he said, adding: “We’ll see all of that come down as long as they continue with quantitative tightening.”

Central bank policymakers tend to look more at core inflation, which is still running well above the Fed’s 2% annual target. 

But Hanke noted that if the Fed continues “to keep doing what they’re doing,” it can reach the “2% range pretty fast.” 

“Forget all the propaganda we’re hearing — that the chairman of the Federal Reserve has a tough problem, that this is going to be a long fight, things are sticky and so forth. Things aren’t sticky,” noted the professor.

—  CNBC’s Jeff Cox contributed to this article

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said 10 hours of meetings with Chinese officials in two days were “direct, substantive and productive” and a step forward in helping to set relations between the world’s two largest economies on a “surer footing.”

Yellen’s Beijing trip comes at a time when Washington is considering curbs on U.S. investment in China amid an escalating global battle for technological supremacy. She is the second member of U.S. President Joe Biden’s cabinet to visit Beijing in recent weeks amid efforts to stabilize ties between the two powers.

“The U.S. and China have significant disagreements. Those disagreements need to be communicated clearly and directly,” Yellen said in prepared remarks. “But President [Joe] Biden and I do not see the relationship between the U.S. and China through the frame of great power conflict.”

“We believe that the world is big enough for both of our countries to thrive. Both nations have an obligation to responsibly manage this relationship: to find a way to live together and share in global prosperity,” she added.

In comments at a press conference capping her four-day Beijing visit, Yellen said she told her Chinese counterparts that any curbs on U.S. outbound investments would be “transparent” and “very narrowly targeted.”

Otherwise, she added, Chinese officials can raise their concerns and U.S. will in some cases, address unintended consequences.

“Broadly speaking, I believe that my bilateral meetings – which totaled about 10 hours over two days – served as a step forward in our effort to put the U.S.-China relationship on surer footing,” Yellen concluded.

Just days before Yellen’s visit, Beijing had slapped export curbs on chipmaking metals and its compounds — which China’s Ministry of Commerce claimed to have given the U.S. and Europe advance notice. In October, the U.S. launched sweeping rules aimed at cutting off exports of key chips and semiconductor tools to China. 

Yellen said she “made clear that the United States is not seeking to decouple from China,” in her discussions with Chinese Premier Li Qiang, Vice Premier He Lifeng and other senior officials.

“There is an important distinction between decoupling, on the one hand, and on the other hand, diversifying critical supply chains or taking targeted national security actions,” she said.

“We know that a decoupling of the world’s two largest economies would be disastrous for both countries and destabilizing for the world,” she added. “And it would be virtually impossible to undertake.”

China Vice Premier He said Saturday talks with Yellen were “constructive,” according to a Chinese government readout.

“Noting that the overstretching of national security does no good to the normal economic and trade exchanges, the Chinese side expressed concerns over the sanctions and restrictions imposed by the United States on China,” the same statement said.

“The two sides agreed to strengthen communication and cooperation on addressing global challenges, and continue maintaining exchanges and interactions,” the statement added.

Yellen’s task in Beijing was a tricky one. While she expressed her worries on “a recent uptick in coercive actions against American firms,” she also sought to seek Chinese cooperation on issues ranging from debt distress in emerging markets and developing countries to climate change. 

These are principles she laid out in an April speech where she stressed the importance of fairness in the U.S. economic competition with China.

Then, she had outlined three economic priorities for the U.S.-China relationship: securing national security interests and protecting human rights, fostering mutually beneficial growth and cooperating on global challenges like climate change and debt distress.

“I believe that if China were to support existing multilateral climate institutions like the Green Climate Fund and the Climate Investment Funds alongside us and other donor governments, we could have a greater impact than we do today,” Yellen said ahead of a Friday climate finance roundtable in Beijing.

Yellen’s visit is part of ongoing efforts to stabilize U.S.-China relations after months of escalating tensions. Her visit came just weeks after Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit last month.

“My objective during this trip has been to establish and deepen relationships with the new economic leadership team in place in Beijing. Our discussions are part of a broader concerted effort to stabilize the relationship, reduce the risk of misunderstanding, and discuss areas of cooperation,” Yellen said Saturday.

These efforts could pave the way for a meeting between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 leaders’ summit in New Delhi in September and the APEC leaders’ summit in San Francisco in November. Both leaders last met in Bali last year.

“No one visit will solve our challenges overnight,” Yellen said. “But I expect that this trip will help build a resilient and productive channel of communication with China’s new economic team.”

Microsoft‘s co-founder Bill Gates will be meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday, Reuters reported Wednesday citing two sources familiar with the matter.

The meeting will be Xi’s first with a foreign CEO in recent years, the report said, as the Chinese leader stopped travelling overseas for almost three years after China shut its borders during the pandemic.

It could be a one-on-one meeting, Reuters said without revealing details on what they might discuss.

CNBC reached out to China’s ministry of foreign affairs but did not hear back at the time of publication.

The two men met in 2015 on the sidelines of the Boao forum, a gathering for political and business leaders, held in Hainan province. They discussed views on enhancing public health service and poverty reduction, according to China’s foreign ministry.

Gates tweeted Wednesday, saying he had landed in Beijing to “visit with partners who have been working on global health and development challenges” for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It is his first visit since 2019.

The billionaire stepped down as Microsoft’s board chair in March 2020 to “dedicate more time to his philanthropic priorities including global health, development, education, and his increasing engagement in tackling climate change.” He left his full-time executive role at Microsoft in 2008.

Gates’ visit comes ahead of a long-awaited trip by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to China this weekend, aimed at stabilizing relations between the two largest economies in the world.

Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and Blinken spoke Wednesday and “discussed the importance of maintaining open lines of communication” in order to manage the U.S.-China relationship and “avoid miscalculation and conflict,” the U.S. State Department said.

Other foreign tech leaders — such as Apple CEO Tim Cook and Tesla CEO Elon Musk — have met with Chinese ministers in recent months.

In March, Cook met China’s minister of commerce Wang Wentao to discuss China’s reopening and broader supply chain issues. Musk met with Chinese vice premier Ding Xuexiang and other top officials in China in May, as Beijing looks to portray a friendly business environment for foreign companies amid tensions with the U.S. government.