U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent waits for the first meeting of President Donald Trump’s Fraud Task Force convened by Vice President J.D. Vance at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus in Washington, DC, on March 27, 2026.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
The U.S. can discuss AI with China because “we are leading the way,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC, as the two countries unveil protocols on best practices for the rapidly evolving technology.
“The two AI superpowers are going to start a dialogue. We’re going to set protocols in terms of how we move forward with AI best practices so that non-state actors don’t have access to these models,” Bessent told Joe Kernen on Thursday, on the sidelines of two days of talks in Beijing with President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“The reason we can have healthy discussions with the Chinese about AI is because we are in the lead,” he added. “If we were this far ahead, we wouldn’t be having the same discussions,” he said.
US-based Anthropic has alerted many in Washington and other countries with its Mythos AI model, which is said to have powerful cyber attack capabilities. The company said it would initially release it to some business partners.
BEIJING, CHINA – MAY 14: Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump pose for a photo at the Temple of Heaven on May 14, 2026 in Beijing. The opening salvo of a multi-task superpower summit began in Beijing on May 14, with Xi warning Trump that a mishandled response could push the two countries into “conflict.” (Photo by Brendan Smialowski – Pool/Getty Images)
China Pool | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Bessent told CNBC that he expects large “step function jumps” to occur with upcoming large-scale language model releases from Google’s Gemini and OpenAI.
The US government is also trying to limit China’s AI development by restricting sales of advanced semiconductors to China, primarily from Nvidia. The company’s CEO, Jensen Huang, was a late addition to President Trump’s delegation to China.
Asked about a Reuters report that the U.S. government had authorized the sale of Nvidia’s H200 AI chip to several major Chinese technology companies, Bessent said there had been “a lot of back and forth” on the matter.
President Trump and President Xi concluded their first major meeting of this week’s trip to China at 12pm local time on Thursday. The Chinese leader stressed that Taiwan was the most important issue for bilateral relations and warned against mishandling the issue, the Chinese government read out.
The Chinese government claims Taiwan, a democratically autonomous island, is part of its territory.
Bessent also told CNBC that President Trump will say more on the Taiwan issue “in the coming days.”
“Mr. Trump … understands the sensitivity to these things, and anyone who says otherwise doesn’t understand Donald Trump’s negotiating style,” he added.
Bessent Asia Week
President Trump’s visit to China this week marks the first time a sitting US president has visited the country since 2017, when Trump visited during his first term. The summit began Thursday morning and is scheduled to end Friday.
Prior to the meeting between President Trump and Mr. Xi, Mr. Bessent spoke with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in South Korea on Wednesday.
According to CNBC’s Chinese translation, China’s Ministry of Commerce said the preliminary talks were an effort to resolve trade issues and “further expand practical cooperation.”
In a short post in X magazine on Thursday morning, Bessent shared a photo of himself with He Lifeng and said they had discussed “economic and trade relations between our two countries.”
Read more about the meeting between President Trump and Xi
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