Donald Trump appeared to offer an olive branch to Chinese telecoms company Huawei on Thursday, raising expectations that he was preparing the ground for a deal to halt the US trade war with China.

Apparently playing down concerns among US officials that the Chinese group posed a risk to national security, Mr Trump wrote on Twitter: “I want the United States to win through competition, not by blocking out currently more advanced technologies.”

His comments struck a noticeably more dovish tone than many others in his administration, who have been lobbying US allies not to use Huawei technology in their own telecoms networks for fear they could be used by Beijing for spying. Huawei is the global leader in next-generation high-speed 5G mobile network technology.