By Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON, Sept 23 (Reuters) - US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Wednesday that he and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng were meeting for a second time this week to clear up "unfinished business" ahead of the summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House on Thursday.
"We have some unfinished business from Sunday," Bessent said, referring to a previous meeting to try to tee up agreements for the two leaders to consider.
"We want
strategic stability but it has to be based in reciprocity and fairness," Bessent told reporters as he entered World Bank headquarters in Washington, where the meeting was due to take place.
He did not answer questions about whether the world's two largest economies would agree to extend a trade truce that expires on November 10.
A US Treasury official said the meeting would involve just Bessent and He to further prepare for the Trump-Xi summit.
Bessent, He and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer met in New York on Sunday in an effort to tee up potential trade and artificial intelligence agreements for the two leaders to consider. Bessent has characterized those talks as "successful," saying that two sides had agreed to launch a communications "hotline" for notifying each other about AI safety incidents.
China's response to the AI hotline plan was unclear, with state news agency Xinhua acknowledging only that the two sides discussed AI.
US-China analysts say expectations on AI cooperation are low due to a lack of mutual trust on the technology and because neither side has expressed serious interest in slowing down development. In fact, Trump has said the opposite, that he would not "stifle" AI growth and would maintain the US lead over China in what he now calls "super intelligence."
The Bessent-Greer-He meeting on Sunday left unresolved the fate of a nearly year-long trade truce between Washington and Beijing, which expires on November 10. The truce dramatically lowered bilateral tariff rates that had quickly escalated to triple digits and after tit-for-tat retaliation over Trump's tariff hikes last year. China also had agreed to restore the flow of rare earth magnets and other critical minerals that it had severely restricted.
Greer told Bloomberg TV on Monday that discussions about extending the trade truce would continue because there was time.
"But my expectation is we'll continue talking and I think both sides want it," he said of a trade truce extension.
Greer added that the US needed to keep pressure on China to ensure compliance on its critical minerals agreements. US officials last week told reporters that the delivery of rare earths by China "has not been up to par".
On Sunday, the two sides discussed other topics that had been previously discussed by Trump and Xi at a May meeting in Beijing, including lowering mutual tariffs on some non-strategic goods and Chinese purchases of Boeing aircraft and agricultural goods.
Greer had said the two sides agreed to "operationalize" a process agreed in May for each side to identify potential tariff cuts on non-strategic goods, called the "Board of Trade." He said these could include Chinese exports such as "consumer goods, low-tech items," he said, while US exports for this treatment could include energy, agricultural goods and medical devices, he added.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and David Lawder; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Andrea Ricci )
