HONG KONG — The United States has proposed a new AI safety notification mechanism for President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to consider at their summit in Washington this week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday, amid global concern over whether the world’s two leading AI powers can work together to contain the technology’s potential dangers.
Speaking to reporters after daylong talks in New York with Chinese officials, Bessent said the two sides had discussed setting up a new U.S.-China AI dialogue that would include a mechanism for alerting each other to AI-related incidents that could affect national security.
“We think that just like with any cross-border activity, that moving from opaque to more transparency between the number one and the number two AI powers in the world is very important,” he said, adding that the two sides had agreed to meet again on the AI issue.
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AI is expected to be high on the agenda when Trump and Xi meet Thursday, especially after warnings from AI leaders in the U.S. that the technology could pose an existential threat within a few years. Trump has dismissed such concerns as a “hoax” while agreeing with AI executives such as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei that the U.S. must not allow China to pull ahead in the global AI race.
Experts caution that the Trump-Xi summit is unlikely to produce any major agreement on AI, citing the high level of distrust between the two countries. China has interpreted calls to slow down AI development as targeted at its own progress.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told reporters that AI talks would not affect U.S. export controls on advanced chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment that have hindered Chinese AI companies.
Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng and China’s chief trade negotiator, Li Chenggang, did not comment to reporters as they left the talks at JPMorganChase headquarters. A Chinese readout of the talks published by Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, did not mention the U.S. proposal and said only that the two sides had discussed AI.
Xinhua said the two sides also had “frank, in-depth and constructive exchanges on important economic and trade issues of common concern, including implementing the consensus reached in previous trade consultations and promoting bilateral trade and investment.”
A major question ahead of this week’s summit is whether Trump and Xi will agree to extend a fragile trade truce that is set to expire Nov. 10.
Bessent and Greer said the two sides had agreed to operationalize a new “Board of Trade” that was announced during Trump’s visit to Beijing in May, and were exploring the potential for lower tariffs on “non-sensitive” products.
On the Chinese side, Greer said, those could include consumer goods and low-tech items, while U.S. exports of energy, agricultural goods and medical devices are also being considered. He did not say whether that meant tariffs on those items would be lowered now or that they would only be exempted from fresh duties in the future.
“There is a world where you have a relatively small subset of American and Chinese goods that can be traded in a balanced way that are non-sensitive,” he said. “Then in the future, as trade actions come up, we can consider them as a class unto themselves.”
Jennifer Jett reported from Hong Kong, and Steve Kopack from New York.
