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Mark Magnier

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.”
Analysts say expectations are relatively low for meaningful deliverables or significant structural reform coming out of the September summit, similar to the May sit-down between Trump and Xi in Beijing.
“I’m not hearing much,” said Zack Cooper, senior fellow with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, “because there’s not going to be much”.




On Tuesday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sharply criticised China for failing to sign on to a joint communique at the G20 Finance Ministers meeting this week in North Carolina. “Non-market-based economies pushing out a never-ending stream of cheap exports is not sustainable,” Bessent added.
The transactional president also praised his administration’s record on attracting huge amounts of foreign investment, although analysts say some of the numbers are difficult to verify or involve pledges that are notional or easily reversed.
“There’s never been a time when US$20 trillion dollars of investment is coming in, and the other number was by China many years ago, the previous record,” he said. “But this is a record that’s five times greater.”
The Trump administration has recently entered into a trade war with Canada after talks collapsed late last month when Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney broke off negotiations, accusing the US of acting in bad faith with “unfair and uneconomic” late-stage changes.
The US countered that Ottawa was abandoning prior commitments, with Trump calling Canadian negotiators “clowns” and “nasty people”.
On Wednesday afternoon from the Oval Office, Trump said China was easier to negotiate with than America’s northern neighbour.

“A lot of people say, ‘Who’s the toughest one to deal with? Is it China, sir? Is it China? Is it Vietnam?’ I said, ‘No, actually, it’s Canada’. Canada has felt emboldened. They had presidents that didn’t know what was happening. Not only the last one, all of them.”
Later in the day, at a dinner in the Rose Garden, Trump suggested the Chinese president holds the US in high esteem in ways he did not under previous US presidents. “When President Xi comes in two weeks, he respects America now,” Trump said.
The US commander-in-chief also said the renewed strikes against Iran were effective. “We knocked out a lot,” he said. “We now control the Hormuz Strait, and we have many boats going through that every day, every night. Many, many boats loaded up with oil.”
Trump suggested that momentum in the six-month war, which he initially said would wrap up in four to five weeks, was with the US. “They’re not doing well at all,” he said. “And so it’s just a question of time. Just a question of time.”
Wednesday’s event saw Trump surrounded by US travel executives as he celebrated a strong summer of travel in the USA, with 290 billion miles travelled on highways and 78 million visitors to national parks. The 2026 Fifa World Cup added US$18 billion to the economy and supported 160,000 jobs, he added.
The president also said his administration would announce within the next 30 days details on an airspace software modernisation initiative, designed to replace legacy air traffic control infrastructure with real-time digital and AI-driven platforms.
Trump has criticised the American people for their recent pushback over AI and the rapid spread of huge data centres.
“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centres is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” he said in a social media post Monday. “If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.”


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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


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.


Trump calls Xi’s Washington visit ‘exciting’, but claims US leads China in AI race

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}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

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