The two leaders also discussed artificial intelligence and possible cooperation on AI safety rules.
China has eased restrictions on rare-earth exports to the United States, but approvals are still slow, while advanced chip controls were barely discussed at the Trump-Xi summit, according to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
Greer said rare-earth flows had returned to better levels, though delays still occur.
“We’ve certainly seen the rare earths come back up to better levels. Sometimes it’s slow. There are times when we have to go and make our point,” Greer told Bloomberg Television in an interview published on May 15.
He gave China a “passing grade” on rare-earth exports and said U.S. officials would intervene when companies report problems. Chinese counterparts have been constructive in resolving specific cases, he added.
The United States recently received several large shipments of yttrium, a rare earth produced only in China that had been in short supply for over a year, affecting the American semiconductor and aerospace industries.
In contrast, talks on semiconductor export controls made little headway.
“This was not a major topic of discussion at the bilateral meeting. We did not talk about chip export controls at the meeting,” Greer said in the same Bloomberg interview.
The United States approved the sale of Nvidia’s advanced H200 AI chips to about 10 Chinese firms, including Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance, in December, with additional conditions added in January. No deliveries have been made so far.
Greer said any decision to import the chips was a “sovereign decision” for China. President Donald Trump suggested Beijing had not approved them because it wants to develop its own technology.
Chinese AI companies are increasingly using domestic chips due to U.S. restrictions.
However, these curbs have slowed Beijing’s push for self-sufficiency while domestic factories struggle to increase output. Some Chinese AI models have had to ration access because of computing shortages.
By James Xu
