Trump and Xi conclude Washington summit without AI accord

Two-month trade truce extension is summit’s biggest policy outcome

President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping concluded their three-day Washington state visit on Friday without producing a major agreement to pause their countries’ artificial intelligence arms race, drawing criticism from lawmakers and analysts who said the opportunity had been squandered. The US president and Xi discussed the wars in Iran and Ukraine and the status of Taiwan; the visit emphasized pageantry and personal rapport over substantive agreements, and its largest policy outcome was a modest two-month extension of a US-China trade truce.

The absence of an AI accord prompted criticism from Democratic lawmakers and analysts that the leaders had missed a chance to coordinate on a technology some experts warn could pose an existential threat to humanity. Trump, who has repeatedly pledged to maintain US dominance over China in AI, instead focused on rebranding artificial intelligence as “super intelligence,” which he claimed Xi “seems to like.”

Representative Ro Khanna, the top Democrat on the House Select Committee on China, called the summit “such a layup” that Trump declined to take. “If [Trump] had just said, look, we have established technical working groups and we’ve agreed to a framework that has called for DeepSeek and Moonshot and Alibaba to sit down with Anthropic and OpenAI and Gemini and with technical experts and they’re going to commit to at least a pause on any self-improving AI, he could have looked like he was a statesman taking the lead,” Khanna said. He added: “I believe Xi Jinping would have agreed to some of at least the technical working groups. But he [Trump] didn’t want to; he has no interest in doing that.”

Khanna argued the bar did not have to be a comprehensive treaty. “Trump didn’t have to have some groundbreaking treaty like Reagan and Gorbachev did [on nuclear weapons],” he said. “He could have at least said, look, we’re going to have a working group of Chinese and American technologists working together to make recommendations and enforcement and verification of the labs.”

Jonathan Czin, a fellow in the Brookings Institution’s China Center, was similarly blunt. “We are in this potentially transformative moment for both countries and for the world and for technology and, instead of having a meeting that would meet the moment, you got theatre of the absurd in lieu of that,” Czin said. “Even going into this meeting, you’re dealing with a septuagenarian and octogenarian who may or may not have ever had first-hand contact with actually using AI and what happens with this technology rests on their two shoulders. The only thing they seemed to agree about is that neither of them wants to slow down with this technology, regardless of their actual understanding of it.”

Czin said the summit’s policy yield fell below already-modest expectations. “I had very low expectations going into this meeting for anything of substance and the meeting managed to underwhelm even those low expectations,” he said. “We went from the mezzanine down into the basement. In terms of the substance, it’s not clear to me what the US got out of this.”

Trump defended the visit. After the two leaders drank tea on Friday, Trump told reporters the summit had produced “great strides” and said “our farmers are going to be happy,” without elaborating. He and Xi then visited the National Archives, where Trump said they were comparing China’s documents to America’s founding documents. “Ours goes 250 years, which is great, and we’re proud of. Theirs goes 6,000 years. So there’s a little difference between 6,000 and 250. But we’re very proud of our 250,” Trump said.

Earlier in the visit, on Thursday, Xi acknowledged that the US and China have “the responsibility to develop and manage AI for good” and “ensure that the development of AI is always under human control.” China has stated a goal of having next-generation smart terminals and AI agents reach more than 90% penetration by 2030.

Thursday night’s black-tie state dinner drew several of the most prominent US tech executives. Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, used social media to attach the guests’ net worth to a photo of the Trump-Xi table: Elon Musk of SpaceX and Tesla ($928bn), Lisa Su of Advanced Micro Devices ($3.5bn), Jensen Huang of Nvidia ($186bn), and Tim Cook of Apple ($3.1bn). Sanders commented: “A government of, by and for the billionaire class.”

Their counterparts in the Chinese tech industry were not present, and there was little sign of either country making even a symbolic gesture to apply the brakes on AI development.

Senate Democrats also criticized the summit, arguing that Trump failed to secure meaningful concessions from Beijing on trade, security, human rights or AI. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said: “As usual, Trump acts based solely on who flatters him at the moment, where the nearest photo op is, and what headline he covets. If you’re a foreign authoritarian, Trump won’t just invite you to visit America, he’ll greet you plane-side.”

The state visit marked the first trip to the White House by a Chinese president in more than a decade and was Xi’s second state visit to the United States. Trump broke with tradition to give Xi a red-carpet welcome at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. He also showed Xi around the White House, including a gallery wall of presidents where Joe Biden is mockingly depicted as an autopen, a construction site for his new White House ballroom, and a new helicopter landing pad. “He’s an expert on stone, aside from many other things, and he loves good granite,” Trump said.

The summit was partly overshadowed by Trump’s decision last week to bar CNN, MS Now, and Politico from the White House, sparking a legal fight. On Thursday, Chinese state media were welcomed onto White House grounds even as members of the US press were frozen out; the barred outlets later gained entry. As during Trump’s May visit to Beijing, the leaders did not hold a press conference.

Trump and Xi are on track to meet twice more this year. In November, Xi will host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, China; in December, the Group of 20 summit will be held at the Trump National Doral Miami golf club in Florida.