China, US Hold Trade Talks in New York Before Xi-Trump Summit

Chinese and US negotiators held roughly eight hours of economic and trade consultations in New York on Sunday, September 20, the first such round ever staged on US soil, as the two sides worked to lay the groundwork for a leaders’ summit in Washington later this week. According to Xinhua News, Vice-Premier He Lifeng led the Chinese delegation, while US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer led the American side. No major agreement was announced, but both delegations described the exchanges as constructive, and a working group was set to continue talks on Monday.

The meeting, held at JPMorgan Chase’s global headquarters in Manhattan, marks the eighth round in a consultation series that began with the Geneva talks in May 2025. It is the first of those rounds to be hosted in the United States; the previous seven were held in third countries. The talks are aimed at preparing a planned Trump-Xi summit in Washington, with Chinese President Xi Jinping set to make his first White House visit in a decade.

An Ambitious Agenda

According to Al Jazeera, the discussions ran for about eight hours and ended with Bessent calling them “very successful.” Both sides discussed implementing the consensus from earlier rounds, bilateral trade and investment, China’s supply of rare earths and critical minerals, energy supply disruptions tied to the Iran situation, and the extension of a tariff truce that expires November 10.

Domestic politics loomed over the talks. Xi arrives for his first White House visit in a decade at the helm of an economy on track to post a US$1 trillion trade surplus for a second straight year, while Trump, contending with the Iran war and low approval ratings, is seeking trade wins to tout before November’s midterm elections, The Business Times reported.

The two sides also moved to operationalise a process agreed in May, known as the “Board of Trade,” to identify non-strategic goods eligible for lower mutual tariffs. Greer said the talks would prepare the groundwork for a “successful summit” and described the targeted goods as “a relatively small subset of American and Chinese goods that can be traded in a balanced way, that are non-sensitive,” adding that they would be considered “a class unto themselves.”

Potential candidates among Chinese exports include consumer and low-tech goods, while US exports could include energy, agricultural goods, and medical devices, according to The Business Times.

AI Emerges as a Central Issue

The most striking development was the emergence of artificial intelligence as a major agenda item, a first for the consultation series. Bessent said Washington had proposed a new US-China AI dialogue that would include a notification system for AI-related incidents serious enough to raise national security concerns.

“We think that, just like with any cross-border activity, that moving from opaque to more transparency between the number one and the number two AI powers in the world is very important,” Bessent said, as quoted by Al Jazeera.

Greer confirmed that US export controls on advanced AI chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment were not part of the proposed mechanism. “These are the two most powerful countries on earth, whether it’s in trade or AI, and it’s imperative that they’re able to work together,” he said. “It doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges in the relationship. A lot of these are obvious.”

The two leaders first discussed potential consultations on AI development during Trump’s May visit to Beijing, but that forum was never formalised. China’s response to the new US proposal was not made explicit; the Xinhua readout only briefly acknowledged that both sides held a dialogue on AI-related issues.

Unresolved Questions and Regional Context

The consultations left several prior commitments unaddressed. Bessent and Greer provided no updates on China’s pledges to increase purchases of US agricultural goods by US$17 billion a year and to buy more than 200 Boeing aircraft, both of which remained unfulfilled after the May summit in Beijing. The two officials also announced no new progress on the flow of critical minerals to US companies, which US officials have said remains insufficient despite Beijing’s earlier commitments under the 2025 trade truce.

That truce, reached at the Trump-Xi summit in Busan, South Korea, in October 2025, capped US tariffs on Chinese goods at about 20 percent after a tit-for-tat trade fight briefly pushed levies into the triple digits. Its scheduled expiry on November 10 is a key deadline looming over the coming summit, at which markets will watch for signs of an extension.

Beyond trade, the Washington summit is expected to touch on the Iran war, Taiwan, and fentanyl precursor flows. The US sees Xi as uniquely able to pressure Tehran, given China’s close ties to Iran and its position as the largest buyer of Iranian oil, though Beijing has shown little inclination to do so. On Taiwan, Beijing hopes to persuade Trump to state publicly that the US opposes Taiwanese independence rather than merely not supporting it, a formulation Washington has used for decades. And Washington continues to press Beijing over the flow of fentanyl precursor chemicals.

Analyst Perspectives

Analysts approached the talks with measured expectations. Li Mingjiang, an associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University, told Lianhe Zaobao that the round showed clear continuity from previous negotiations and that success could push forward concrete measures such as lowering some tariffs, launching a China-US investment committee mechanism, and breakthroughs in automotive and pharmaceutical investment and market access. He judged the AI dimension more important than in any previous round, with a possible breakthrough in a common statement.

George Chen, partner and chair of the Digital Practice at The Asia Group consultancy in Hong Kong, offered a more cautious view. “Obviously, one or two meetings cannot resolve every issue, but the fact that both sides agreed to continue the dialogue is significant,” he said. He added that prospects for AI cooperation remain limited due to low trust between the two countries and Beijing’s perception that Washington seeks to contain China’s AI development.

Gu Qingyang, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, characterised the round not as a one-sided process but as a negotiation in which both sides have demands and may make concessions. While China-US contradictions and risks remain large, he said, the relationship is gradually moving closer and has eased somewhat.

Others were more sceptical about near-term AI outcomes. Li Liangfu, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said China’s overall strategy may be to give Trump something to satisfy him while avoiding excessive concessions, and that substantive AI controls are unlikely to be agreed now.

What’s Next

A working group was to continue discussions on Monday, ahead of the planned Trump-Xi summit in Washington on Thursday and Friday. For investors and policymakers, the central questions are whether the two sides can extend the tariff truce before its November 10 expiry, whether the emerging AI dialogue produces anything beyond symbolic agreement, and whether long-stalled commitments on aircraft, agriculture, and critical minerals finally move forward. With no major breakthroughs announced in New York, the summit itself will be the real test.