US President Trump claims AI lead over China, welcomes Xi Jinping visit

US president praises Xi and predicts they have ‘a lot of good things to discuss’ at summit, while bragging of beating Beijing in tech war

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Mark Magnierin New York

Published: 7:13am, 3 Sep 2026

US President Donald Trump claimed on Wednesday that the US held a significant lead over China in artificial intelligence, touted what he termed unprecedented levels of inbound US investment and said he was thrilled about Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington later this month.

The president’s bravado comes as inflation and oil prices rise, his war of choice with Iran drags on and his polling numbers hit new lows ahead of the US midterm elections in November.

“AI is going up, and we’re leading China in AI very substantially,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

“By the way, we have the president of China coming on the 24th. That’ll be very exciting. Great, love to love to have him. A lot of good things to discuss, very, very productive things to discuss with President Xi.”

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‘A milestone visit’: Xi and Trump set sights on stability for China-US relations

Analysts say expectations are relatively low for meaningful deliverables or significant structural reform coming out of the summit.