Trump to host China’s Xi Jinping: What to expect, who will attend the state dinner in Washington? Everything you need to know | Today’s news
The White House will host a state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping next week. Several business magnates are expected to attend the dinner, including the executive chairman of Apple Inc. Tim Cook and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
US President Donald Trump earlier said he would host a state dinner for Xi Jinping when the Chinese leader visits the White House on September 24.
“We’re going to have a state dinner and we’re going to do great things with China,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
“He’s a great gentleman, we get along great, we have a very good business relationship, and you know, they’re competitors and all that, but we have a very good relationship with President Xi,” Trump said.
“He’s coming with his beautiful wife, she’s a beautiful woman and a great woman, respected around the world, they’re coming together,” Trump added.
Who will attend the state dinner?
A person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that Cook will be at an event hosted by US President Donald Trump in Washington. OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, confirmed that Altman participated.
The White House did not immediately confirm whether Altman would attend.
Other business leaders expected to attend the dinner include the CEO of Nvidia Corp. Jensen Huang, Bloomberg News reported.
Altman’s expected appearance comes amid a heated exchange of views in Washington and Silicon Valley over the regulation of artificial intelligence, after scientists warned of risks to humanity and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei called for a slowdown in the development of frontier models.
Sources have also been quoted as saying that Chinese officials are considering BYD Co. for a possible trade delegation to join Xi Jinping’s summit with Donald Trump in Washington next week.
Trump-Xi summit
US President Donald Trump will meet with Xi Jinping in Washington next week. The Chinese president will arrive in the US on his state visit on September 24. China has not yet confirmed the date of Xi’s trip, which it tends to do only a few days in advance.
The summit comes at a delicate moment for US-China relations – and the artificial intelligence industry. Geopolitical tensions boil over the AI race, international trade and the Middle East. Trump said earlier this week that he maintains a “great relationship” with Xi Jinping.
Importance
State dinners are among the highest diplomatic honors a US president can bestow on a foreign leader and are usually reserved for heads of allied nations.
Hosting a state dinner for Xi is notable because Trump often characterizes China as a rival. Xi hosted a state dinner for Trump when he visited the country in May.
Huang attended the meeting, as did SpaceX CEO and former Trump adviser Elon Musk and former Apple CEO Tim Cook.
Trump has hosted one state dinner for Britain’s King Charles and Queen Camilla since the start of his second term.
What is expected at the Trump-Xi summit?
The US and China are discussing reducing tariffs on certain goods.
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told Fox News this month that he expected to see “an announcement on agriculture and non-tariff barriers related to agriculture” during Xi’s visit.
Greer also said he expects the Board of Trade to make more announcements about toys, games and fireworks that could protect them from future tariffs or other trade measures.
The meetings between the two sides are likely to lead to an agreement to reduce tariffs on Chinese inputs for manufacturers, the sources said. The moves are expected to come as part of an earlier plan to reciprocally cut tariffs on roughly $30 billion worth of trade.
Trump’s war on Iran also casts a long shadow as China tries to avoid US sanctions against countries that deal with Tehran, despite reports that Beijing has supplied Tehran with intelligence to attack US troops.
China, in particular, is a major buyer of Iranian oil, and Beijing has resisted Trump’s calls to cut off trade with Iran as the US president seeks to increase economic pressure on Tehran to force it to end a deal to end the more than six-month-old conflict.
On Iran, “I told President Xi, ‘Please don’t get involved’ — I have a very good relationship — and they’re not really involved,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday.
According to Bloomberg, there is a potential sign that next week’s leaders’ summit will lead to an extension of the year-long trade truce. “These two leaders are more likely to simply prolong the relative truce than to produce any concrete results, as when Xi Jinping hosted Trump in Beijing four months ago,” AFP experts said.
Any major deals are “politically out of reach for now,” said Wang Dong, a professor at Peking University, as both Beijing and Washington fear losing the race for AI dominance.
For his state visit in May, Trump brought more than a dozen CEOs to China, including Jensen Huang of Nvidia Corp. and Elon Musk of Tesla Inc. The executives met with Li Qiang, and Xi told them that American businesses “are deeply involved in China’s reform and opening up, a process that benefits both sides.”
During Xi’s last state visit to the US in 2015, he brought a delegation of prominent Chinese CEOs. Back then, he was accompanied by tech leaders such as Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma and Tencent’s Pony Ma, as well as executives from China’s state-owned companies and banks.
Trump and Xi are scheduled to meet in November at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Shenzhen, China. The Kremlin proposed a tripartite meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Meanwhile, Trump is expected to invite Xi to the December G20 summit at his Doral resort in Miami.
(With inputs from AFP, Bloomberg)
