Traders see overwhelming evidence against any US-China agreement to pace frontier AI development in 2026, driven by President Trump’s repeated statements after the September summit that the United States “is not going to be putting on brakes” and will maintain its lead of at least a year in large language model capabilities. The resulting US-China Super Intelligence Dialogue and incident notification channel focus narrowly on risk discussions and deconfliction rather than coordinated slowdowns, export control relaxations, or mutual pauses on frontier models. Ongoing chip export restrictions and competitive positioning further reinforce this trader consensus. A breakthrough would require major shifts in US policy or credible third-party verification mechanisms that remain absent from current talks.