Trump and Xi Discuss AI Governance Amid Economic Warfare
President Donald Trump and Xi Jinping are negotiating AI governance while the U.S. pursues criminal charges against Huawei and restricts semiconductor exports to China.
The United States and China are competing for artificial intelligence primacy through a combination of diplomatic summits and aggressive economic restrictions. Donald Trump and Xi Jinping recently met in Washington to discuss AI governance, with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announcing that formal AI talks and a safety notification mechanism will precede upcoming summits in Shenzhen and Doral.
While the U.S. maintains an advantage in infrastructure and chip technology, China has narrowed the performance gap to 3% following the release of DeepSeek’s V4.1 Flash model. In response, the Trump administration is utilizing the Department of Commerce to enforce semiconductor export controls and recently approved a $14 billion merger between Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks to counter Chinese AI offerings.
Parallel to these diplomatic efforts, the U.S. is pursuing a legal campaign against Huawei. The company is currently on trial in Brooklyn for a multi-decade criminal scheme involving fraud and trade secret theft.
