Bessent and He open talks on AI and critical minerals in New York
The treasury secretary and China's vice premier meet on Sunday ahead of Xi Jinping's visit, with AI, trade and critical minerals on the agenda, Reuters reports.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and China's vice premier, He Lifeng, will launch talks on AI, trade and critical minerals, Reuters reported on Sunday. Bloomberg said on Saturday that the two would lead talks on trade and other pressure points in New York on Sunday. Reuters had earlier reported, citing a source, that Bessent planned to discuss AI and rare earths.
The meeting was set for 10.30am Eastern at JPMorgan's Manhattan headquarters, with the trade representative Jamieson Greer attending, according to a market summary posted on X, which also noted that the US-China trade truce expires on 10 November. Bloomberg's Sunday audio bulletins ran the talks alongside Hormuz shipments as the day's main stories.
The talks precede Xi Jinping's visit. The New York Post reported on Friday that Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Sam Altman have invitations to the White House state dinner for Xi. Other accounts list Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook and Michael Dell. One, citing NPR, says China asked for more than half of the roughly 100 seats for its own delegation.
AI is on the Trump-Xi agenda, according to an account citing senior US officials. What talks on AI mean at treasury level is not spelled out in any of the reports. Reuters has spent the week on distillation, the technique by which one lab trains on another's outputs, which it calls one of the most politically fraught questions in the standoff.