SHANGHAI, April 18 (Reuters) - China stocks edged down on Friday and looked set to end the week flat, as the market took a breather following U.S. President Donald Trump's indication of a possible end to the tit-for-tat trade war between the world's two largest economies.

** China's blue-chip CSI300 Index .CSI300 and the Shanghai Composite Index .SSEC both dipped 0.4% each. For the week, the CSI300 Index was on track to end up 0.2%.

** Trump on Thursday signalled a potential end to the tit-for-tat tariff hikes between the U.S. and China that shocked markets, and that a deal over the fate of social media platform TikTok may have to wait.

** The CSI300 Index has only dropped 3% since April 2 when Trump announced reciprocal tariffs that upended global stock markets, as state-backed investors stepped in to support markets and local bourses set daily restrictions on net share sales.

** The Hong Kong market is closed for local holidays and will resume trading next Tuesday. For the short week, Hang Seng Index rose 2.3%.

** Consumer staple shares .CSICS declined 1.2%, dragging performance onshore, while financial shares .CSI300FN edged up 0.4%.

** One of the few bright spots is the BSE 50 Index .CSI899050, a gauge for start-ups listed in Beijing, was up 1.5%.

** Nvidia NVDA.O CEO Jensen Huang said on Thursday that China was a very important market for Nvidia after the U.S. imposed a ban on sales of its H20 artificial intelligence chips to the country.

** The CSI All Share Semiconductor Index .CSIH30184 dropped 1.6%.

** Investors are awaiting a press conference scheduled for Monday, where regulators are expected to outline their plan for "expanding opening-up of the service-sector".

(Reporting by Shanghai Newsroom; cEditing by Rashmi Aich)

((li.gu@tr.com))