US, China to Discuss AI, Tariffs and Critical Minerals Ahead of Trump-Xi Meeting

AP

US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in 2025.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng are due to meet on Sunday to discuss potential agreements on artificial intelligence, tariffs and critical minerals ahead of a high-stakes meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping later this week.

The talks, to be held at JPMorgan Chase’s headquarters in Manhattan, will also include US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. The meeting is scheduled to begin at around 10:30 a.m. (1430 GMT) and is expected to continue throughout the day.

Key issues on the agenda include the status of a US-China trade truce due to expire on 10 November, supplies of Chinese rare-earth magnets and critical minerals, which US officials say remain insufficient, and possible safeguards for artificial intelligence following reports of significant security breaches involving AI models.

Many of the issues that He, Bessent and Greer will have to work through for Trump and Xi are holdovers from the two leaders' meeting in Beijing in May, including an effort on both sides to cut tariffs on non-strategic goods and Chinese pledges to increase purchases of US agricultural goods by $17 billion a year and to purchase more than 200 Boeing aircraft.

The Bessent-He-Greer meeting follows a pattern set over the past 16 months, in which the three officials met in European and Asian cities to tee up potential agreements for Trump and Xi. These efforts included the November 2025 truce reached in Busan, South Korea.

The Bessent-He discussions on AI are significant because the US and China are the two major forces driving development of advanced AI tools and the global adoption of the technology. Rare earths play a crucial role in the manufacturing of advanced semiconductor technology powering AI.

Bessent said on Friday he expects the discussions to cover "both open- and closed-weight models." Open-weight models are AI systems with publicly accessible core elements where users can download and fine-tune them for specific tasks.

Chinese open-weight models ⁠are becoming more popular with US companies because they can be cheaper than closed-weight AI tools such as those developed by Anthropic, OpenAI and other US companies.

"The United States remains the leader in AI. And we are open to discussions on avoiding shared risks and avoiding bifurcation of our two systems," Bessent said in a statement regarding the China talks.

Bessent has called for the US and China to agree on AI "guard rails" aimed at keeping powerful models out of the hands of ⁠malign non-state actors.

The US and China also agreed in May to launch discussions to reduce tariffs for non-strategic goods under a so-called "Board of Trade" mechanism along with a similar forum to deal with specific investment issues.

China's Ministry of Commerce said on Saturday that He would also lead a delegation of Chinese companies to the US that would participate in economic and trade consultations ahead of the summit.

The business delegation, which mirrors a group of US CEOs that Trump brought to Beijing in May, was announced as Trump expressed openness to Chinese automakers building US factories. US auto industry groups on Friday urged Trump to maintain an effective ban on Chinese vehicle sales in the US on national security grounds.

Source: Reuters



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