HONG KONG (AP) — The United States and China released Monday reciprocal lists of products worth about $30 billion each that will see tariff cuts, in a deal expected to boost bilateral trade.

The details came days after Chinese President Xi Jinping met with President Donald Trump in Washington in his first state visit to the U.S. since 2015. The U.S. had already reduced tariffs against China after Trump’s tariffs reached as high as 145% at one point last year, as tensions between the two countries eased.

China’s commerce ministry said in a statement the agreement will help strengthen trade cooperation.

Most country-specific tariffs practically eradicated

The lists included 1,619 items of U.S. goods entering China, ranging from agricultural commodities, personal care products to timber and medical equipment. Coal from the U.S. will also be included.

For Chinese goods exported to the U.S., 77 categories were covered, including fireworks, tableware, glass and wooden Christmas ornaments and soccer balls.

Tariff rates on over 90% of the products would be subject to “most-favored-nation” levels, the Chinese commerce ministry said, meaning that country-specific tariffs will effectively be eliminated.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a separate statement the product lists focused on “nonsensitive goods on each side that could benefit from more favorable tariff treatment.” The deal could help secure market access for U.S. farmers, manufacturers, businesses and workers, while benefiting American consumers with imports from China including household goods and toys, Greer said.

Both countries said they agreed the list may be adjusted later as needed, but amendments were likely to be no more than on an annual basis.

The Chinese commerce ministry said the two countries agreed to further cooperate in the agricultural sector, forming a group under the Board of Trade established in May to optimize bilateral trade.

Sectors of strategic importance for both countries, such as chips, electric vehicles and batteries, were not covered under the agreement.

A potential boost to US-China bilateral trade

“This is a positive outcome for these affected products compared to a smaller tariff cut, and could lead to a more significant boost to bilateral trade,” said Lynn Song, chief economist for Greater China at ING Bank.

The lowered tariffs could be a win for U.S. consumer brands, added Jacob Cooke, CEO of WPIC Marketing + Technologies based in Beijing, as some of the products covered by China’s list of U.S. imports included fast-growing categories like hair care, personal care products and infant formula.

The U.S. list for Chinese imports focused more on consumer goods, which could help lower U.S. inflation while also allowing Chinese firms to export more of their overcapacity, said Gary Ng, a senior economist at French bank Natixis.

Some experts said, however, the economic impact at $30 billion each way may be limited overall.

U.S. exports to China were roughly $68 billion through the first seven months of this year, while Chinese exports to the U.S. were at around $270 billion for the first eight months, said Prashant Bhayani, chief investment officer for Asia at BNP Paribas Wealth Management.

A $30 billion deal each way will be “more meaningful” for U.S. exports to China in terms of percentage share, he said.

China’s trade surplus expected to remain elevated

While the deal did not cover sensitive strategic goods, analysts believe U.S.-China trade will likely continue to recover for the rest of the year after steep U.S. tariffs on Chinese products last year hit bilateral trade.

The U.S. and China last week also reached a two-month extension of the broader trade truce that was set to expire Nov. 10 to January.

China’s trade surplus, which reached a record $1.2 trillion last year, will likely remain elevated. By August, it stood at about $800 billion, putting this year’s surplus “on pace to exceed the 2025 record,” according to Ecaterina Bigos, a senior market strategist with BNP Paribas Asset Management.

The U.S. is also investigating China among 16 trading partners in its Section 301 probe on excess industrial capacity and could impose additional tariffs on China when the investigation concludes.

However, with more meetings set between Trump and Xi, including at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen in November and at the Group of 20 summit in Florida in December, Song at ING said he would not expect a major flare-up of trade tensions before year-end.

Exporters welcome the tariff deal

Some Chinese exporters welcomed the tariff deal announcements.

“This is positive news,” said Richard Chan of Golden Arts Gifts & Decor, which manufactures Christmas decorations in southern China and supplies to countries including the U.S. “The economy in both the U.S. and China is not really good, and the two sides should help each other more.”

However, because most of this year’s Christmas goods are already being shipped ahead of the peak holiday season, the tariff reductions may have limited effect for them at least for now.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Residents along Mexico’s west coast stacked sandbags to fortify beachfront shops and evacuated their homes, while Hawaii’s Big Island and Maui braced for potentially catastrophic flooding, as separate hurricanes swirled in the Pacific on Thursday.

Nolo became a hurricane in the Pacific Ocean on Thursday night and was expected to strengthen while turning toward the Big Island, the National Hurricane Center said. Forecasters warned that the Big Island could see rainfall totals of 15 to 30 inches (38 to 76 centimeters), with higher amounts possible through Saturday. The island of Maui also could be hit with life-threatening floods, the hurricane center said.

Meanwhile, heavy rains from powerful Hurricane Polo could cause torrential flooding and landslides in Mexico, according to the U.S. hurricane center. In the port city of Lázaro Cárdenas, seawater already swept through homes Thursday and left wooden planks and furniture strewn on the streets.

Polo has fluctuated between Category 4 and 5, both major-hurricane strength. It was expected to regain Category 5 status on Friday, then gradually weaken Friday night and Saturday, the hurricane center said.

After skirting Mexico’s coast, Polo was expected to move farther out to sea Thursday night and Friday before hooking back toward land to the north on Saturday.

The series of powerful storms comes as the weather phenomenon El Niño prompts major environmental shifts across the world, fueling drought in some areas and flooding in others. El Niño traditionally dampens the Atlantic hurricane season, while it tends to rev up tropical cyclone activity in the Pacific with moist air and little wind shear.

Hawaii has been battered this year by major flooding in the spring, an earthquake and two other hurricanes since mid-August.

“In my 20 years of experience here, I’ve never seen three hurricane watches for the islands in the same year,” said John Bravender of the National Weather Service in Honolulu.

Polo could trigger flooding and mudslides in Mexico

Mexican authorities were opening shelters and clearing people from beaches, while coastal residents tried to protect businesses from getting swept away. People in high-risk areas were being evacuated, though authorities didn’t immediately say how many.

Much of the worry from locals comes from hurricanes in past years that devastated cities along the Pacific coast. Hurricane Otis in 2023 unexpectedly plunged Acapulco into turmoil for weeks.

“So many people said it wouldn’t happen and then it did. After that, you’re left on edge,” said Gonzalo Ramírez, a bartender in the city.

Polo posed the biggest threat to Guerrero and Michoacán, neighboring states in southwest Mexico that share a long coastline scattered with small ports, tourist towns and fishing villages. Much of the area is marked by poverty, and residents routinely complain they are left to fend for themselves during natural disasters.

Mexican authorities have deployed 15,000 security personnel across the coast and suspended schools.

In Lázaro Cárdenas, a port city in Michoacán that was hit with high surf, locals and government officials were clearing out piles of wooden planks from a number of destroyed ramadas and shoveling thick mud coating much of the town.

Alicia Contreras said the walls and roof of her restaurant had been severely damaged by 15-foot (4.5-meter) waves. As officers and family helped pick through the damaged house, Contreras worried how she would economically recover.

“This is huge because we have no other source of income. Now we’re just surviving,” Contreras said.

Nolo could flood parts of Hawaii still recovering from other storms

While the Big Island is expected to bear the brunt of Nolo, its full path remains uncertain, according to Bravender, the weather service’s warning coordination meteorologist in Hawaii.

Most concerning, he said Thursday, is that the heaviest rain is likely to fall over the same southeastern region of the Big Island hit in August by Hurricane Lala and where grounds are still wet from additional precipitation.

“There are several communities that were isolated, flooded, roads that were washed out,” he said. “It’s that same area that is most under threat,” Bravender said.

Hawaii officials told residents to put together emergency kits and the governor issued an emergency proclamation, activating more than 230 Hawaii National Guard members. Schools were closed for the rest of the week.

Hawaiian Electric, the state’s primary utility, said crews that had been helping restore power in Kauai after this month’s Hurricane Lowell would return to Oahu, Maui and the Big Island in preparation for the coming storm.

Odalys and Fay are not near land

A third storm in the Pacific, Hurricane Odalys, was centered far from land, roughly 1,110 miles (1,785 kilometers) west-southwest of the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula.

In the northern Atlantic Ocean, Tropical Storm Fay re-formed early Thursday, the U.S. hurricane center said. It was nearly 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) west-southwest of the Azores.

Tropical Storm Gonzalo formed in the Atlantic Ocean late Thursday, about 190 miles (306 kilometers) southeast of the Cape Verde islands off the coast of West Africa. The U.S. hurricane center said that if it stays on its current track, the storm will pass near or over portions of the islands Friday.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The heads of major artificial intelligence firms pleaded with the United Nations on Wednesday to save the world or at least its people — by somehow regulating the fast-expanding technology that they have been designing.

“If managed poorly, I even believe AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole,” said Dario Amodei, chief executive officer of Anthropic. And from his competitor Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, came this assessment: “We could lose control of the future to AI.”

Both said the countries of the world, through the U.N. Security Council, where they testified Wednesday, have to set safeguards of some kind to prevent the technology from getting too powerful to rein in.

They also called for the world to make sure that the power of AI isn’t concentrated in one company or country. They also touted the benefits of the technology for bettering humanity and what Altman called “giving people more power over their own lives.”

Those tech leaders “are telling us in stark terms that it cannot be left to them to prevent disaster from befalling the world,” British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said at the Security Council. “We cannot ignore them because they are right.’’

AI will be at the heart of G20 discussions

Miliband said when the U.K. leads the G20 next year, it will put controlling AI at the heart of discussions, looking for a single set of global standards “to insure that AI development is safe.”

But, the United States said: Don’t do it.

Worries about control of AI are “not a reason to pause its further development or to constrain it with new global governance structure,” said White House Science Adviser Michael Kratsios. “We want you, our allies and partners, to share in the benefits of this technology.”

The U.S. and China are jostling for AI dominance — and Chinese U.N. Ambassador Fu Cong emphasized that all countries should be able to choose AI technology as they see fit.

He warned against “banding together into a petty us-vs.-them clique in the tech sector and forcing other countries to take sides” and enabling unnamed major powers that he described as seeking “digital hegemony.” He called on countries instead to promote open-source models — China’s approach to the technology.

For most of the world leaders, one key question about AI is this: Who should control life-and-death decisions — human or machine?

Amodei, Altman and Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue, who spoke via a glitchy remote connection, spoke with the U.N.’s most powerful council because they and world leaders are trying to figure out not just whether to control AI, but by whom, how it could possibly be done and when it might be just too late.

The day before, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of “killer robots.” Experts and European leaders said that’s not hyperbole but something that’s either already a grim reality or perilously close.

Amodei called on world leaders to agree on not letting AI build biological weapons, figure out how to verify what models have the capability to do and “establish common standards” for testing and for loss of control and misuse.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, whose country convened Wednesday’s meeting, compared the current state of AI to both the runaway computer HAL9000 in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” and the dawn of the atomic age.

“Just as with the atom back then, the international community must now regulate AI in order to make the most of its potential and avoid the worst,” Barrot said.

Other leaders and nations are paying close attention to AI

His wasn’t the only concern expressed during this high-profile U.N. meeting week.

“We must not allow the cost of today’s hesitation to become tomorrow’s catastrophe,” said Liberian UN Ambassador Lewis G. Brown II.

Ukrainian President President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, speaking at the General Assembly, said some kind of human control over machines must achieved soon. Otherwise, he said, for his country — at war for 4½ years — it may be just too late.

“There is already a real possibility that AI, not only people, will begin to decide what happens on the battlefield. And we need peace before we reach that point,” Zelenskyy said.

Last month, a Russian drone seemingly using AI “autonomously made a targeting decision that killed three Ukrainians. Killer robots are technically easy to build, and they are real. We should not be under any illusions otherwise,” Kentaro Toyama, an information technology professor at the University of Michigan, said in an email.

Data scientist Rumman Chowdhury, co-founder of the accountability nonprofit Humane Intelligence, said the idea of killer robots “evokes a science-fiction villain, when the question I want the public to ask is much more concrete: Who authorized a machine to select and attack a target, under what constraints, and who answers for the result?”

The U.N. meeting unfolded as Chinese President Xi Jinping headed to Washington for a much-anticipated state visit. AI interests are looking to what comes out of Xi’s discussions with U.S. President Donald Trump. Earlier, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the two countries had discussed a potential new “notification mechanism” for AI incidents that could impact national security.

But on Tuesday, Trump, lauding AI as “superintelligence,” said the United States would reject efforts to control the technology as it tries to win the development race with China. Kratsios was the one of the few who used that term in the Security Council.

Meanwhile, regional groups in Europe, Asia and elsewhere also are trying to coordinate AI policies, and various nations — and even subcomponents, such as U.S. states — are crafting their own.