Trump to host state dinner at White House for Xi and tech titans

US President Donald Trump is to welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House on Thursday, with trade tensions between the two countries expected to feature prominently on the agenda.

A state dinner is planned for the evening, at which Xi and Trump will both give speeches.

US tech executives are also expected to attend, including Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google and Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai and Apple chief executive Tim Cook, according to a senior government official.

The presence of the tech leaders suggests that competition between the world's two largest economies in the field of artificial intelligence could be a key topic of the state visit.

Xi arrived in Washington on Wednesday evening and will remain in the US until Friday.

It is the Chinese president's first visit to the US since 2023, when he travelled to California for the APEC economic summit and met Trump's predecessor Joe Biden.

Trump invited Xi to the White House during his own visit to Beijing in mid-May.