Trump to Greet Xi at Andrews in Rare Airport Welcome — SkimNews
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- Donald Trump plans to greet Xi Jinping at Joint Base Andrews on arrival — a rarity for a US president meeting a foreign leader at the airport, per a senior US official's Friday briefing.
- The state visit on Sep 24 will include a White House arrival ceremony, a Rose Garden military review, and an evening state dinner hosted by the Trumps with Xi and Peng Liyuan as guests of honour.
- Tech CEOs invited to the state dinner include Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Sundar Pichai (Alphabet), Sam Altman (OpenAI), Tim Cook (Apple), Elon Musk (Tesla), Jensen Huang (Nvidia), and Michael Dell (Dell Technologies).
- Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that "thousands of people would love to be at that dinner," noting he had told many friends they couldn't attend.
- First ladies Melania Trump and Peng Liyuan will hold a separate bilateral engagement during the visit, US officials said.
- Trade, rare earths, and AI are expected to be among the topics discussed during Xi's visit, officials told reporters.
Why it matters: The airport greeting itself signals Trump is staging the visit as a personal diplomatic gesture rather than a routine state occasion — unusual enough that officials flagged it to reporters. With rare earths, AI, and trade on the agenda and the CEOs of America's most powerful AI and chip firms at the dinner table, the guest list mirrors exactly the industries at the center of the US-China economic rivalry Xi is flying in to negotiate.
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