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Trump plans to greet Xi at airport on arrival, officials say

By Thomson Reuters Sep 18, 2026 | 5:36 PM

WASHINGTON, Sept 18 (Reuters) – US President Donald Trump plans to greet Chinese President Xi Jinping at Joint ​Base Andrews, at the airport ‌of the military base just outside Washington, DC, on his arrival next week for a White House visit, a senior ‌US ​official told reporters on ⁠Friday.

It is rare ⁠for the US president to greet visiting foreign leaders at the airport.

Senior US officials who briefed reporters about ​the visit said it will include an arrival ceremony inside the ⁠White House, a ⁠Rose Garden military review and ​a state dinner in the evening.

They said ​among the guests for the dinner ‌will be a number of tech CEOs, including Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, Sam Altman ⁠of OpenAI, Tim Cook of Apple, Elon Musk of Tesla, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, ⁠and Michael ‌Dell of Dell Technologies.

Issues ⁠such as trade, flow of ​rare ‌earths to the global ​economy and ⁠AI are expected to be among the topics that will be discussed during the visit, officials said.

(Reporting by Steve Holland and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by ​Chris Reese)