President Donald Trump on Thursday said Chinese leader Xi Jinping would be in Washington on Sept. 24 for a state visit during which artificial intelligence would take up a significant portion of their agenda.
Trump confirmed the date for the visit during an event at the Environmental Protection Agency alongside Energy Secretary Chris Wright and other panelists who’d come there to discuss the administration's efforts to keep electricity costs down amid sky-high demand from AI data centers.
He called the burgeoning AI sector “the biggest thing anybody’s ever seen” and claimed the U.S. is “leading China” in the race to develop Artificial Generalized Intelligence.
“We want to keep it that way. President Xi is coming over on September 24th, and we talked about it when I was over in Beijing, and we'll be talking about it again,” he said.
The Sept. 24 state visit was first floated in May when Trump formally invited the Chinese leader during his own state visit to Beijing.
The president had extended the invitation during a lavish banquet at the Great Hall of the People at which he hailed the “special relationship” between the United States and China and said he’d had “extremely positive and productive talks” with Xi.
At the time, he recounted how the Sino-American relationship dates back to the time of the American Revolution and said the connections formed then have “grown into one of the most consequential relationships in world history.”
He added: “Tonight, it is my honor to extend an invitation to you and Madam Peng to visit us at the White House this September 24, and we look forward to it.”
Xi’s September trip to Washington will make him the second world leader Trump has hosted for a state visit this year following King Charles III’s visit to Washington last month. It will be the Chinese leader’s first visit to the White House in more than a decade, coming almost exactly 11 years to the day then-president Barack Obama hosted him and his wife for a state visit.
The state visit will include a welcome ceremony on the White House’s South Lawn, which is currently undergoing repairs after it played host to a Ultimate Fighting Championship event in June.
Workers needed weeks to dismantle the massive lighting truss that had been erected to both illuminate and shelter the seating and fighting surface for the televised combat sports event, with aerial photographs showing damage to the grass left in the structure’s wake.
The White House is also working to finish construction on a helipad that will serve as a landing site for new presidential transport helicopters that have been in testing for nearly a decade.
Known as the VH-92 Patriot, the Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin aircraft has not been used to transport the president to or from the White House because its engines have a tendency to burn the grass it lands on.
White House officials have said the helipad project is being paid for by Sikorsky.
