US Proposes AI Notification Channel to China Ahead of Summit — SkimNews
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- Scott Bessent and He Lifeng led about eight hours of talks Sunday at JPMorgan Chase's New York headquarters, joined by US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer; Bessent called the engagement "very successful" on both trade and AI.
- The US proposed a "US-China AI dialogue" — a notification channel for AI developments that "rise up to a national security level," Bessent said, with both sides agreeing to meet again on the mechanism.
- The meetings are a prelude to Thursday's planned White House summit between Trump and Xi Jinping, leaders of the world's two largest economies.
- US negotiators are working to identify "non-sensitive" goods — potential Chinese consumer goods and US energy, agricultural and medical-device exports — for separate tariff treatment, Greer said, while also pressing for continued flow of rare earth magnets and critical minerals.
- China's fulfillment of earlier pledges to purchase US agriculture goods remains under scrutiny, and Iran sits on the agenda: China is Iran's top oil buyer and diplomatic backer, while Washington's economic pressure on Tehran has entered a seventh month.
- Kurt Campbell, former US deputy secretary of state, cautioned expectations are low: "one of the only things we can hope for in the short term is a truce," predicting Trump and Xi will meet again at November's APEC in Shenzhen and December's summit at Trump's Doral resort in Miami.
Why it matters: For Bessent's team, the concrete win is a shared vocabulary on AI risk — a notification mechanism that treats catastrophic AI scenarios as a bilateral concern rather than a competitive flashpoint. The narrow deliverable matches Campbell's caveat that only a "truce" is realistic: structural, not substantive.
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