Key facts
- Bessent said the US wants to "de-risk, not to decouple" from trade with China.
- A "Board of Trade" agreed at earlier summits will determine mutual tariff cuts on $30 billion of non-sensitive goods each way.
- Bessent said a "Board of Investment" will address market access for American companies in China.
- Bessent said the two sides expect to exchange best practices for testing advanced models before release.
- Bessent made no mention of the Nvidia board review of CEO Jensen Huang.
- China's foreign ministry called the spying accusations "groundless" and "a smear."
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on November 10 that the United States and China should harbor no illusions about their differences on artificial intelligence as they work on cooperation to mitigate the technology's risks while competing for AI supremacy. In prepared remarks to the National Committee on US-China Relations in New York, he said he wanted to "build a constructive relationship on the basis of balance and reciprocity."
Bessent said he will travel to China for a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Shenzhen, to be held on the sidelines of the November 18-19 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders summit. It would be Trump's third meeting with Xi this year. Bessent said the meeting will advance a new bilateral dialogue on "superintelligence," or SI, the term the Trump administration uses for the technology.
The dialogue is meant to guard against shared risks and "prevent a misunderstanding between our two systems," Bessent said. "We also expect to exchange best practices for evaluating and testing advanced models before their release, and for keeping human judgment firmly in command of this technology," he said, adding the two sides had agreed to establish a direct channel for alerting each other to serious incidents. Trump and Xi agreed on the AI alert system at their September meeting at the White House, where Trump also said he was reluctant to add new guardrails because he wanted to preserve US leadership.
"As we do so, we should harbor no illusions about the differences between the United States and China," Bessent said. "As I stated earlier, our interests will not always coincide. And our approach to every challenge, likewise, will not always converge."
Bessent's remarks made no mention of the controversy surrounding Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who is facing an investigation by the AI chipmaker's board after a New York Times report that he had an affair with a businesswoman suspected by US security services of being a Chinese intelligence asset. China's foreign ministry has called the spying accusations "groundless" and "a smear." Nvidia has said its board has no reason to believe US national security or company secrets were compromised and that Huang has committed to cooperating with the internal review. Huang has told employees he was unfaithful to his wife, but provided no details about the relationship. While Huang was present at the Trump-Xi summits in Beijing in May and in Washington in September, it was unclear if Trump would bring him to the APEC summit. A fourth Trump-Xi summit this year is expected in December at the US-hosted G20 summit in Miami.
Bessent referred to other trade initiatives agreed during the two previous Trump-Xi summits, including the establishment of a "Board of Trade" to determine mutual tariff cuts on $30 billion of non-sensitive goods in each direction, and China's pledged purchases of US farm goods. A similarly structured "Board of Investment" will provide a forum for issues including market access for American companies in China and "increased predictability for Chinese companies," he said. He reiterated that the US trade deficit with China remains a source of friction, but the US objective is to "de-risk, not to decouple" from trade with China.