Musk, Cook, and 15 Other CEOs Board Air Force One for Trump’s Beijing Summit
BBC Business reported Tuesday that President Donald Trump is bringing a Trump China delegation of 17 senior US executives to Beijing for a sit-down with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The group spans finance, technology, aviation, and agriculture. Confirmed attendees include Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and BlackRock chairman Larry Fink. Executives from Meta, Boeing, Visa, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, Mastercard, JP Morgan, and Cargill are also making the trip.
A Surprise Addition Changes the Lineup
One late arrival generated significant attention. Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, was spotted boarding Air Force One during a refuelling stop in Anchorage, Alaska. His inclusion had not been announced in advance.
A Nvidia spokesperson told the BBC that Huang joined at Trump’s personal invitation to support American interests at the summit. The addition carries weight. Nvidia sits at the centre of the US-China rivalry over semiconductors and artificial intelligence, and Washington has tightened chip export controls targeting Chinese buyers in recent years.
Also notable is the presence of Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO of Micron Technology. Beijing restricted Micron products from critical infrastructure in 2023 on national security grounds. Micron said that decision materially hurt its Chinese business.
Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins was invited but had to decline, a company spokeswoman said, citing a scheduling conflict with an earnings release.
First Presidential Visit to China in Nearly a Decade
Trump’s Beijing stop is the first by a sitting US president in roughly ten years, arriving at a sensitive moment in the bilateral relationship. The two sides entered a fragile ceasefire in their tariff dispute, after duties on both sides briefly exceeded 100% before a pause was agreed in late 2025 following a Trump-Xi meeting in South Korea.
Geopolitics add further complexity to the agenda. The ongoing US-Israel military campaign in Iran has already pushed back the timing of the Trump-Xi talks. Trump is expected to press Beijing to use its economic leverage over Tehran, given China’s dependence on Iranian crude oil exports. China has signalled it also wants an end to the conflict, and has trimmed oil purchases from Iran, though its diversified energy supply has cushioned the domestic impact.
Corporate America Watches the Outcome Closely
The sheer breadth of the delegation reflects how much is at stake for US multinationals. Consumer hardware, cloud computing, financial services, aerospace, biotech, and commodity agriculture are all represented. Illumina, the California-based genomics firm, said its CEO Jacob Thaysen views the trip as a chance to advance international health research partnerships.
The summit’s outcome will likely shape the regulatory and trade environment for US companies operating in China well into the second half of the decade.
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