US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will meet Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in New York on September 19-20 for talks on artificial intelligence, rare earth minerals and the broader economic relationship between the United States and China. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer is also expected to participate. The discussions will precede a September 24 summit in Washington between former President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, and are intended to identify areas where the leaders could announce progress. Bessent has described US leadership in AI as non-negotiable while acknowledging shared risks, including safety failures and adversarial uses. The talks are also expected to address AI model distillation, a process that compresses large systems into smaller versions, amid US concerns that Chinese companies could replicate frontier-model capabilities and bypass export controls. Rare earth minerals, which are vital to electric vehicles, fighter jets and AI semiconductors, will form another key issue as China dominates global production and has previously used export restrictions in trade disputes. Investors are watching for signals affecting chipmakers, cloud providers, AI developers and commodity markets. Neither government has previewed specific outcomes, and any substance is expected to emerge through official readouts after the meetings.