Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer met Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in New York on Sunday to set the terms of the summit between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping on September 24.
The meeting took place at JPMorgan Chase’s headquarters in the city. Bessent said the discussions were meant to “lay the groundwork for President Trump to advance America’s economic interests and deliver results for the American people.”
The agenda covered trade, tariffs, rare earths and artificial intelligence. On the economic side, both governments are working toward operationalising the US-China Board of Trade, a tariff-reduced mechanism for non-sensitive sectors capped at $30 billion for each side, and toward extending the trade truce agreed by the two leaders in Busan, South Korea.
That truce lowered US tariffs on some Chinese goods, suspended additional restrictions on Chinese-affiliated companies, paused certain Chinese rare earth export controls for one year, and secured Chinese commitments on US soybeans and fentanyl precursors. A core element — Washington’s suspension of heightened reciprocal tariffs on Chinese imports — is scheduled to expire Nov. 10.
The continuation of high-level economic contacts mirrored talks Bessent and He held in Seoul in May, just days before Trump met Xi in Beijing.
Rare earths remained a point of friction. A senior White House official said on Friday that “China’s performance in that respect has not been up to par of what we would expect,” and that the issue would feature in Sunday’s talks.
The meeting also opened the long-delayed dialogue on AI safety and governance. The two sides agreed in May to establish an intergovernmental AI channel, but it has struggled to progress. Washington wanted a narrow focus on AI safety and risk, while Beijing sought a broader conversation on global AI governance.
US officials have accused Chinese firms of distilling technology from American AI models. “The Chinese models distil from the US models, which is a polite scientific word for steal,” Bessent said. The Chinese embassy in Washington rejected the allegation, calling distillation “a common technical practice used by AI developers worldwide, including US companies.”
The visit will be Xi’s first during Trump’s second term. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Citigroup chief Jane Fraser, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang are expected to attend a state dinner during the trip.