Trump plans to greet Xi at airport ahead of White House visit
 |
| U.S. and Chinese flags with U.S. dollar currency. Illustrative image. The image represents U.S.-China economic and diplomatic relations. |
US President Donald Trump plans to personally greet Chinese President Xi Jinping at Joint Base Andrews when Xi arrives near Washington next week for a White House visit, a senior US official said. Such an airport greeting by a US president for a visiting foreign leader is unusual.
The visit is scheduled to include a formal arrival ceremony at the White House, a military review in the Rose Garden and a state dinner, according to US officials who briefed reporters. Xi's visit is expected to bring the leaders together for discussions on several areas of US-China relations.
Technology executives are expected to attend the state dinner, including Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Alphabet's Sundar Pichai, OpenAI's Sam Altman, Apple's Tim Cook, Tesla's Elon Musk, Nvidia's Jensen Huang and Dell Technologies' Michael Dell.
Trade, the supply of rare earth materials that are important to the global economy, and artificial intelligence are expected to be among the subjects discussed during the visit, officials said.
The meeting comes as Washington and Beijing continue talks on trade and other areas of their relationship. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng began talks in New York on Sunday covering issues including trade, critical minerals and AI ahead of the leaders' meeting.
Trump and Xi are scheduled to meet in Washington on September 24, according to current plans. The meeting would be their second summit of the year, with trade, technology and other areas of disagreement expected to remain important issues in the relationship.
