Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit the United States on a state visit next week, marking the first visit at this level in more than a decade. In Washington, he will hold talks with US President Donald Trump, attend a state reception at the White House and discuss trade and economic issues.
Xi Jinping will arrive in the US on Wednesday. According to US administration officials, Trump will personally greet him at Joint Base Andrews near Washington, an unusual move because the US president typically receives foreign leaders at the White House.
The main events will take place on Thursday. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump will welcome Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan, at an official White House ceremony, after which the presidents will hold closed-door talks. A state dinner for the Chinese delegation is scheduled for the evening.
Invited guests include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser and Tim Cook, who recently stepped down as Apple’s CEO, will also attend the dinner.
The talks will focus on tariffs, rare earth metal supplies and artificial intelligence. Washington and Beijing may discuss reducing some tariffs on a limited group of strategically insignificant goods, but the US does not yet plan to ease export rules restricting the supply of rare earth metals.
Separate talks on these issues will also be held in New York, where US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will meet He Lifeng, Vice Premier of the State Council of China. Xi Jinping last made a state visit to the US in September 2015, during Barack Obama’s presidency.
The significance of this visit lies not only in the fact that it is taking place after such a long interval. The program shows that political contacts and economic issues are simultaneously on the agendas of Washington and Beijing, with tariffs, rare earth metal supplies and artificial intelligence among the particularly sensitive topics.
The presence of technology sector representatives at the state dinner is also notable. It underscores the broad scope of the economic agenda to be discussed, while the two sides still do not fully agree on the issue of rare earth elements.
