Chinese President Xi Jinping was expected to push President Donald Trump on Thursday for a larger role in managing global affairs as the two leaders kicked off a day of pomp and meetings, opening Xi’s rare state visit to Washington.
The two leaders were scheduled to exchange gifts and then witness a cavalcade of American military might, including a flyover by a B-2 stealth bomber of the type that struck Iran’s nuclear program last year.
Then they were to sit for substantive meetings in which Xi was expected to continue to attempt to constrain U.S. support for Taiwan, the island off China’s coast that Washington has long bolstered militarily. Trump is seeking Chinese investment in U.S. manufacturing, restrained aid for Iran in its war with Washington, and cooperation on other issues. Chief among them is artificial intelligence and how to respond to the rise of advanced, and potentially dangerous, AI models.
But Trump poured cold water Thursday on movement toward regulating AI development.
“A big day with President Xi of China. Super Intelligence (SI) will be a big topic of discussion, but I want to leave it exactly where it is. That is China’s position also. Our guardrail is the DOJ!” Trump posted on Truth Social.
A day earlier, he boasted about the guest list for a state dinner in the East Room of the White House, where top U.S. business executives and senior Trump officials will mingle with the Chinese delegation.
“Everybody wanted to be there,” Trump said. “The entire tech world, the entire banking world, and a lot more… if you go by points I think it’s the ultimate crowd.”
It was Xi’s first visit to Washington since a state visit 11 years ago, with President Barack Obama — and a measure of how much Trump’s approach to China has changed since his first term, and even since the opening months of his second.
In his first term, Trump steered Washington away from the economic cooperation that previous presidents of both parties embraced in the hope that a richer China would become more democratic.
When he came back to office, he quickly drove tariffs on Chinese goods to 145 percent, demanding that manufacturing that had moved to China be relocated back to U.S. shores. But he backed away from that level of tariffs after China retaliated by imposing restrictions on the exports of the critical minerals that are the raw material of American technological advances.
For now, Trump is back into courting mode, agreeing to a rapid pace of meetings with Xi that puts them across the table from each other every few months. For this visit, he pushed his staff to renovate the White House grounds, including a new helipad on the south lawn whose ribbon he cut this week.
“It’s very nice to land on what they consider to be the most beautiful helipad ever, ever built, by far,” Trump said Wednesday upon returning from Joint Base Andrews, where he made a rare trip to the airport to greet Xi upon his arrival.
Trump last met Xi in Beijing in May, and the two leaders are likely to see each other in November at a summit in Shenzhen, China, and potentially again in December at a meeting in Miami. Trump sought Wednesday to outdo Xi’s welcome in Beijing through the visit to Andrews, a gesture U.S. presidents typically reserve for the pope.
Trump wants Xi to back away from Iran, where the regime has weathered nearly seven months of war but is slowly being squeezed by an economic blockade. Xi, meanwhile, has been on a global diplomatic tour, presenting Beijing as a more stable and predictable superpower than Washington.
Asked what he’ll discuss with Xi about Iran, Trump said Wednesday: “We’ll see. I’ll be talking about that and many other subjects, but it’s also coming along well, including that.”
Xi will depart Friday after partaking of tea — echoing the tea he served Trump in China — and after a visit to the National Archives where the leaders will see some of “the United States’ most important founding documents as we celebrate our 250th anniversary,” said Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson.
Lawmakers of both parties have urged Trump to press Xi to open Chinese markets, while expressing caution about the flow of advanced computing chips there.
“I hope they open up their markets to more agricultural exports and commodities. They’ve given lip service to it — they’ve done some but not all the things they’ve committed to do,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) told reporters on Wednesday. “And then I would like to see them perhaps come up with something in the area of the AI world.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) said Wednesday that “President Trump must draw a hard line: Do not weaken America’s export controls. Do not give China greater access to the advanced chips and chipmaking equipment it needs to close the gap with the United States.”
Theodoric Meyer contributed to this report.
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