The Senate Finance Committee examines the nomination of Scott Bessent for secretary of the treasury, January 16, 2025 – Washington DC. Credit: Maxim Elramsisy via Shutterstock The United States has proposed that Washington and Beijing notify each other of AI incidents serious enough to qualify as national security events, an idea Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent put forward to Chinese officials during talks in Manhattan on Sunday. Scott Bessent and Jamieson Greer, the trade representative, met with He Lifeng, the Vice Premier, and Li Chenggang, the trade negotiator, at JPMorgan’s headquarters, since the bank had lent them the space because General Assembly security was about to close off much of midtown. JPMorgan is not taking part in the talks, and the working-level teams continued the meetings into Monday.
Moving “from opaque to more transparency between the No. 1 and the No. 2 AI powers in the world is very important”, Bessent told reporters afterward. He presented it as a channel for communication rather than anything resembling a treaty. Jamieson Greer said export controls on AI chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment were excluded, which is the thing Beijing has most consistently wanted reopened. Nikkei reported this month that the American side intended to raise AI-directed cyberattacks and the misuse of agentic systems, and to ask laboratories on both sides to share threat information.
Li said the talks had been “not bad” and confirmed AI was among the subjects. A Xinhua readout described candid and constructive exchanges and listed AI-related issues alongside trade and investment, without addressing the American proposal. Beijing has not said whether it accepts, and Chinese officials have not described the mechanism. Both sides agreed to meet again about AI, but they have not set a date, place, or format.
On the trade side, Greer said the Board of Trade, agreed in principle during Trump’s May visit to Beijing, “has been made operational”. It is meant to negotiate tariff cuts on goods that neither government treats as strategic, energy, or agriculture on the American list. No rates or product lists were disclosed. Everything comes down to two key dates, both set for November 10.
On that day, the tariff truce ends, and China’s suspension of rare-earth export controls, in place since last October, also expires. These issues were not resolved in New York, and American manufacturers say magnet shipments are still arriving in amounts too small to be useful. Bessent made the proposal five days after telling House Financial Services that the best guarantee of safety is that “the creators are liable for what they build and generate”, rejecting the liability shields US laboratories have sought. FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson said that week that requests pairing regulation with antitrust relief set off “all of my alarm bells”.
Sunday’s round was groundwork for Thursday, when Xi Jinping is due at the White House. Executives from BYD, CATL and Xiaomi may travel with him. As of last week, Beijing had not formally confirmed the visit.
