China wants the US to ease export controls on a critical component for artificial intelligence chips as part of a trade deal ahead of a possible summit between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping.
Chinese officials have told experts in Washington that Beijing wants the Trump administration to relax export restrictions on high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, according to several people familiar with the matter.
US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent has led three rounds of trade negotiations with China over the past three months. One person said the Chinese team, headed by vice-premier He Lifeng, had raised the HBM issue in some of those negotiations. The US Treasury declined to comment.