US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent plans to discuss AI, trade, rare earths and broader economic issues with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in New York City this weekend, according to a source familiar with his plans. The meeting comes before a September 24 summit in Washington between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The talks are significant because the United States and China are the two major forces driving advanced AI development and the technology’s global adoption, while rare earths are essential to technology manufacturing. Bessent said the agenda will include both open-weight models, whose core elements are publicly accessible and can be downloaded and fine-tuned, and closed-weight AI tools. Chinese open-weight models are gaining popularity among US companies because they can be cheaper than systems developed by Anthropic, OpenAI and other US companies. Chinese AI models have also been used by the US government. Reuters reported that a US government website used a model from Alibaba to help users search proposed federal regulations, even as the FBI accused Alibaba of maliciously copying Anthropic’s technology. The Associated Press first reported the US plans.