US, China leaders to negotiate AI regulation, tech theft allegations and Busan tariff truce

Trump to personally greet Xi on the tarmac; top US tech CEOs to attend state dinner

Trump to meet UK, Japanese leaders at UN General Assembly, hold talks with GCC on Iran war

US President Donald Trump (right) and Chinese President Xi Jinping speak at the Zhongnanhai garden in Beijing in May. [AP]
US President Donald Trump (right) and Chinese President Xi Jinping speak at the Zhongnanhai garden in Beijing in May. [AP]

A mammoth "diplomatic super week" set to reshape the global economic, trade and security landscape is getting underway. US President Donald Trump will hold a series of meetings with leaders of key allies and parties to ongoing conflicts on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York this week, before heading straight to the White House in Washington for a state summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The week is expected to bring a cascade of high-stakes diplomacy — a strategic showdown between the US and Chinese leaders over AI supremacy and the trade war, alongside multilateral efforts to find a path toward ending the protracted conflict in the Middle East.

The centerpiece of the super week is the US-China summit in Washington. In a phone briefing with AP, Reuters and Kyodo News on Friday, senior US officials said the two leaders will formally put AI and the future of the "Busan truce" framework at the top of the agenda.

The AI discussion is expected to go well beyond industrial cooperation, focusing on regulation and technology protection with direct implications for global security. Observers say the talks will zero in on the recent global debate over slowing AI development — including warnings of existential risk — as well as US concerns over Chinese companies allegedly stealing American AI source technology.

Reflecting the weight of the technology rivalry, the state dinner scheduled for Wednesday at the White House will draw a who's who of American big tech. Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Tim Cook of Apple, Elon Musk of Tesla, Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos, and Dell Technologies Chairman Michael Dell are all set to attend — representing the hardware, software and cloud ecosystems — and will be front and center in the pressure campaign and negotiations with China.

On trade, the two sides will take up the extension and fine-tuning of the "Busan truce." The truce refers to an agreement Trump and Xi reached when they met separately in Busan on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea in late October last year, under which the two countries agreed to halt a full-blown escalation of their tariff war. Whether both sides can hold to the existing framework and avoid further trade friction is the question global financial and trade markets are watching most closely.

The US is also pulling out all the stops on protocol. Trump plans to travel personally to Joint Base Andrews near Washington to greet Xi on the tarmac on Wednesday, the day Xi arrives for his US visit. It is exceedingly rare for a US president to meet a foreign leader directly at an air base, and the gesture is widely seen as an effort to signal the highest level of state hospitality — and to extract tangible diplomatic results.

On Thursday, the summit day, the schedule calls for an official White House welcome ceremony, a formal honor guard review in the Rose Garden, the leaders' meeting itself, and the state dinner with the assembled tech CEOs. Xi is set to wrap up his official engagements and depart for home on Friday.

US President Donald Trump speaks at an "End of Summer Barbecue" event with Republican lawmakers in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington on Sept. 2 (local time). [EPA]
US President Donald Trump speaks at an "End of Summer Barbecue" event with Republican lawmakers in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington on Sept. 2 (local time). [EPA]

Before the US-China summit, a relentless string of bilateral meetings at the UN General Assembly in New York will reflect the complexity of the current international landscape. US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz announced in the phone briefing that Trump will meet British Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.

The meeting with Burnham will be his first bilateral encounter with Trump since taking office in July. A US-Japan summit with Prime Minister Takaichi is also on the schedule. Trump is additionally set to meet Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodríguez for the first time.

The volatile situation in the Middle East will also reach a critical juncture. Trump will hold a multilateral summit with leaders of the six Gulf Cooperation Council member states — Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain.

AP noted that the GCC meeting comes as the war with Iran has dragged on for more than six months, leaving the United States struggling to find a path to ending the conflict. With the US-China technology and trade negotiations in Washington running in parallel with the multilateral security diplomacy in New York, this week is shaping up to be a decisive turning point for the future global order.


silverpaper@heraldcorp.com