This week’s summit between Trump and Xi will “provide the baseline for several really important conversations about the U.S.-China relationship in the years and decades to come,” said Rana Mitter, a professor of U.S.-Asia relations at the Harvard Kennedy School.
“It will help set terms on trade, which is of course one of the most controversial areas between the two sides, particularly on areas such as China’s trade surplus and the U.S.’ need to export agricultural products,” Mitter told NBC News.
He said the summit would also start a conversation about the Beijing-claimed island of Taiwan, though an immediate resolution is unlikely, “and will also start a real conversation about technology and AI.”
Though AI is a relatively new issue in U.S.-China relations, “I think the fact there are so many tech moguls who have accompanied the president on this trip show how important that’s going to be,” Mitter said.
According to the White House, more than a dozen American CEOs are accompanying Trump, including Apple’s Tim Cook, Elon Musk of SpaceX and Tesla and Jensen Huang, whose company, Nvidia, is a central player in AI.