Bessent to Discuss AI, Trade with China

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent plans to discuss artificial intelligence, trade, rare earths and economic issues when he meets Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in New York City this weekend, a source familiar with his plans told Reuters.

The United States and China are the two major forces driving the development of advanced AI tools and their adoption worldwide. Rare earths also play a crucial role in the manufacturing of technology.

Bessent and He will meet ahead of a summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington on 24 September.

In a statement, Bessent said in a statement that he expected the discussions to cover “both open- and closed-weight models”. Open-weight models are AI systems with publicly accessible core elements that users can download and fine-tune for specific tasks.

Chinese open-weight models are becoming increasingly popular among US companies because they can be cheaper than closed-weight AI tools developed by Anthropic, OpenAI and other US firms.

Such models have also been used by the US government. Reuters reported on Thursday that a US government website employed a model developed by Chinese company Alibaba to allow users to search proposed federal regulations, despite the FBI accusing Alibaba of “malicious” copying of Anthropic’s technology.

(Reuters, luc)