Musk, Huang, Cook Among 18 CEOs Flying With Trump to Beijing
BBC Business reported Wednesday that US President Donald Trump is bringing 18 senior American corporate executives on his official state visit to Beijing. The Trump China delegation includes some of the most powerful names in global business and technology.
The Full Lineup of Corporate Power
Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, Tim Cook of Apple, and Larry Fink of BlackRock are confirmed attendees. So are the chief executives of Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Visa, Mastercard, Blackstone, Boeing, Cargill, and GE Aerospace. The breadth of industries represented spans consumer hardware, finance, defence, and agriculture.
A notable late addition was Jensen Huang of Nvidia. He was not originally included in the delegation. Huang boarded Air Force One during a refuelling stop in Anchorage, Alaska. A Nvidia spokesperson told BBC Business that Huang joined at Trump’s personal invitation to support American interests.
Also notable is Sanjay Mehrotra, chief executive of Micron Technology. Beijing barred certain Micron chips from critical Chinese infrastructure in 2023 on national security grounds. His inclusion underscores how semiconductors remain central to the bilateral relationship despite deep tensions.
Background: A Decade of Drift and Confrontation
Trump’s visit is the first by a sitting US president to China in nearly ten years. The two countries spent much of 2024 and early 2025 locked in a damaging tariff war. Duties on both sides climbed above 100% at their peak. A fragile truce, reached after Trump’s previous meeting with Xi in South Korea in October 2025, paused those measures.
Also Read: US and China agree 90-day tariff pause
Iran Conflict Casts a Shadow Over the Summit
The ongoing US and Israel military campaign against Iran has complicated the agenda. The conflict forced an initial delay to the Trump-Xi meeting. Trump is expected to press Beijing to use its leverage over Tehran to broker a ceasefire. China relies on Iranian oil exports, giving it a degree of influence over the situation. However, China’s diverse energy supply has so far shielded it from the war’s worst economic effects.
One leading executive, Chuck Robbins of Cisco, was invited but declined due to a scheduling conflict with his company’s earnings release, a company representative confirmed to BBC Business.
The presence of this many senior executives signals that American business is watching this summit with considerable urgency.
