The United States and China opened economic and trade consultations Sunday morning at JPMorgan Chase’s Manhattan headquarters, a stopgap meeting aimed at preventing renewed commercial friction before a planned summit between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping in Washington this week.
He Lifeng, China’s vice premier, led a delegation that included representatives from Chinese companies, according to an announcement from China’s Commerce Ministry. The talks were expected to address the expiration of the current trade truce on November 10, restrictions on Chinese exports of rare-earth magnets and critical minerals, efforts to lower tariffs on non-strategic goods — issues first raised during a May meeting in Beijing — and a new topic: potential guardrails for artificial intelligence development and deployment.
Scott Bessent, the U.S. Treasury secretary, said the discussions would cover both open- and closed-weight AI models, urging limits to prevent powerful systems from reaching non-state actors deemed hostile. Chinese open-weight AI models have been adopted by several U.S. firms, partly on cost grounds, as alternatives to closed systems offered by OpenAI and Anthropic.
On critical minerals, the meeting comes amid dissatisfaction in Washington. A senior U.S. official stated Friday that China’s performance on restoring supplies of rare-earth materials — commitments made under a prior trade truce — had "not been up to par." Under that earlier agreement, Beijing also committed to purchasing $17 billion annually in U.S. agricultural products and more than 200 Boeing aircraft.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer participated in the consultations, which analysts expect to yield limited, confidence-preserving steps rather than a broad breakthrough. The outcome will set the tone for the Trump-Xi summit later in the week.
