Senior U.S. officials reported productive discussions with Chinese counterparts on trade and artificial intelligence in the run-up to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said they had a “very successful engagement with the Chinese on trade and AI” on Sunday.
According to Bessent, the talks picked up where discussions in Beijing had left off. Delegations focused on AI topics and on how to “operationalize” the Board of Trade ahead of Xi’s arrival in Washington, which is scheduled for Wednesday.
The U.S. delegation highlighted plans to establish a formal, standing U.S.-China dialogue on artificial intelligence. Bessent said the United States proposed a bilateral “notification mechanism” for AI incidents that pose threats to national security. That mechanism would include a “shared vision” of what constitute “common threats.”
On trade, the conversations centered on which “relatively small subset” of goods might be handled by the Board of Trade rather than through individual national security reviews. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer identified candidate categories for that approach: consumer goods; “low-tech” items; energy-related products; agricultural goods; and medical devices.
Officials said they planned to meet again to continue work on these issues. The discussions aimed to move toward concrete procedures and practical mechanisms in advance of the leaders’ summit.
Why it matters
These talks touch on the intersection of trade policy and national security: decisions about which products are processed through bilateral trade channels versus security reviews can affect supply chains and bilateral relations. Likewise, negotiating a notification mechanism for AI incidents could be an early step toward managing cross-border risks posed by automated and AI-driven systems.
