Bessent Meets He Lifeng as Trump-Xi Summit Nears

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng opened high-level economic talks at JPMorgan Chase’s Manhattan headquarters on Sunday morning, four days before President Donald Trump is due to host President Xi Jinping at the White House, according to CNBC.

Bessent said in a post on X that he and He were continuing discussions on the US-China economic and trade relationship ahead of what he called Trump’s historic summit with Xi in Washington, adding that the talks help lay the groundwork for the president to advance American economic interests. Arriving at the meeting, he told reporters he looked forward to “focused, fulsome and constructive talks today that will set the stage” for the leaders’ meeting. Al Jazeera, citing AFP and Reuters, also reported the New York session and named US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer as a participant, a detail CNBC likewise carried as expected.

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Key facts

• Bessent and He met at JPMorgan Chase’s global corporate headquarters in New York City on September 20, 2026, with Greer also taking part, per Al Jazeera.
• The Trump-Xi summit is set for September 24 in Washington, D.C., Xi’s first visit there during Trump’s second term.
• A US-China trade truce reached in Busan, South Korea, last November is scheduled to expire on November 10; it capped US tariffs on Chinese goods at about 20 percent after a tit-for-tat fight briefly pushed tariffs into the triple digits.
• A senior US official said on Friday that Beijing’s performance on restoring critical minerals had “not been up to par,” Al Jazeera reported.
• JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon and Citigroup chief Jane Fraser are expected at a state dinner during Xi’s visit, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Nvidia chief Jensen Huang also set to attend, per CNBC.

Rare earths and the expiring truce

The fragile trade truce tops the agenda in New York. Under last year’s agreement, China committed to restoring flows of rare-earth magnets and other critical minerals, while Washington reduced some tariffs and suspended higher reciprocal levies on Chinese imports and China pledged agricultural purchases. Washington has kept pressing Beijing over those mineral supplies, which feed industries from cars to advanced semiconductors.

AI guardrails join the table

Artificial intelligence is a relatively new entry in negotiations long dominated by trade. Bessent has said the two countries could discuss AI guardrails addressing shared risks, including keeping powerful models out of the hands of malign non-state actors, and the talks are expected to cover both open-weight and closed-weight models. Chinese open-weight systems have drawn US corporate interest partly because they can cost less than closed models from American developers such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Bessent said the United States remains the leader in AI and that Washington is open to discussions on avoiding shared risks and avoiding bifurcation of the two systems.

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Iran is another potential friction point: China remains one of Tehran’s most important economic partners and buys much of its oil, Al Jazeera reported, as the US-Israel war on Iran enters its seventh month.

Why it matters

The meeting sets the table for a presidential summit between the world’s two largest economies, so any deliverables on tariffs, minerals or AI rules would reach far beyond the negotiating room. The November 10 expiry gives both sides a hard deadline that predates any long-term framework. For technology and manufacturing firms on both sides, the treatment of rare-earth flows and open-weight AI models is the practical question; for Washington, the debate over AI safety and national security has intensified, with the administration favouring voluntary, security-focused safeguards over broad mandatory rules, a posture Trump has defended even as top AI executives urged guardrails.

Expectations are deliberately modest. China trade analyst Anna Ashton told Reuters she expects some show of deliverables given the presidential summit but does not feel a breakthrough is near, calling the status quo both sides’ general best expectation. Former US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said the short-term hope is simply a truce that continues through the remainder of the year.

What to watch

The summit itself on September 24 is the next milestone, followed by the November 10 expiry of the tariff suspension. Further signals could come from the state dinner guest list and from any joint statement on critical minerals or AI risk. This is not financial advice, and markets tied to trade and technology policy remain volatile and uncertain.

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Sources: CNBC, Al Jazeera