Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wants the United States and China to share a "shared vision of common goals and common threats" on artificial intelligence. His concrete idea: a mechanism for the two countries to notify each other about AI incidents that could affect national security.

An AI Alert System, Minus the Details

According to an Associated Press report, Bessent unveiled the proposal after meeting Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in New York on Sunday, four days before President Donald Trump is due to host Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington.

"We think that just like any cross-border activity, that moving from opaque to more transparency between the No. 1 and the No. 2 AI powers in the world is very important," Bessent said.

The notification proposal would create a channel for sharing information about AI incidents with national-security implications, but officials have not publicly detailed what would trigger an alert or how it would operate. AP reported that Chinese state media said the two sides discussed matters "relating to AI" without describing the mechanism.

Cooperation Talk, Competition Reality

The talks put AI safety alongside an intensifying technology race. Bessent warned earlier this month that America "can't pause" its competition with China and said, "If they were to pull ahead of us on AI, then nothing else matters." Trump has also resisted calls to slow frontier AI development, arguing that "whoever wins with AI wins" and that tighter constraints could help China close the gap.

So the pitch is less about slowing down and more about knowing when something goes wrong. Think of it as a hotline for the AI era, though nobody has said what counts as an emergency worth a call.

Trade Track Widens Ahead of the Summit

The weekend meeting also advanced a broader economic track. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Washington and Beijing agreed to operationalize a new "Board of Trade," a government-to-government mechanism intended to manage bilateral commerce and identify "nonsensitive" goods that could qualify for tariff reductions.

Greer said the potential list could include consumer and agricultural goods, energy products and medical devices. "Today those notions have become reality," he said.

USTR had previously sought public input on tariff modifications for non-sensitive products under the framework, while negotiators have been discussing potential reciprocal tariff reductions ahead of the Trump-Xi summit.