DOMINANT ANGLE
Madrid sees the Trump-Xi summit as a technological and commercial battle more than a simple diplomatic ritual, the tariff truce threatening to expire while artificial intelligence takes center stage in the discussions.
Dominant angle identified — does not reflect unanimity of this country’s media
KEY POINTS
- 01
AI will be a central topic at Thursday's summit at the White House, according to El País, between the two countries most advanced in this technology
- 02
Expansión reports that the tariff truce between Washington and Beijing is about to expire, alongside the Taiwan and Iran files
- 03
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng negotiated a shared alert system in New York for serious AI-related incidents, according to Expansión
ANALYSIS
Madrid, September 23, 2026. For the Spanish press, the summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping opening this week in Washington is less about protocol than about artificial intelligence and trade. El País emphasizes that AI will be one of the central topics of discussion on Thursday at the White House, between the two countries that have made the most progress in this technology. The newspaper notes a contrast in mindset: a majority of Americans say they are concerned about the risk that AI poses to humanity, while the Chinese population approaches it with enthusiasm. The industrial models also differ: Silicon Valley prioritizes closed systems whose training remains an industrial secret, while Beijing is betting on open source, a strategy perceived in Washington as a threat to American competitiveness, against a backdrop of accusations of industrial espionage. El País quotes the head of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, who linked his call to slow down the development of the most powerful models to a blockade of Beijing's access to advanced semiconductors. Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, on the other hand, called for "quarantining the entire AI ecosystem out of reach of the Chinese Communist Party" during a symposium shared with progressive Senator Bernie Sanders.
Expansión places Xi's three-day state visit in a tight schedule: the Chinese president arrives in Washington as the UN General Assembly brings together a large part of the world's leaders in New York. Trump is to return to the White House after his intervention at the UN to receive Xi the next day, while Chinese Vice President Han Zheng represents him in New York. The newspaper notes that Beijing only officially announced the visit the day before. According to Expansión, the meeting will be marked by a commercial, military, and technological showdown, with the risks of the AI race, a tariff truce about to expire, the evolution of the war in Iran and its energy and commercial impact, as well as the status of Taiwan on the agenda. The newspaper reports that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng held preparatory negotiations in New York, resulting in a draft shared alert system between Washington and Beijing in the event of a serious AI-related incident, after autonomous hacking suffered by third-party companies attributed to models like those developed by OpenAI.
