President Donald Trump has invited executives from some of the biggest U.S. companies — including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Apple CEO Tim Cook, BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink and Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg — to join his trip to China this week, according to a White House official.
Also expected to join Trump’s delegation for meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping are Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, Cargill’s Brian Sikes, Citigroup’s Jane Fraser, Coherent’s Jim Anderson, GE Aerospace’s H. Lawrence Culp Jr., Goldman Sachs’s David Solomon, Illumina’s Jacob Thaysen, Mastercard’s Michael Miebach, Meta Platforms executive Dina Powell McCormick, Micron Technology’s Sanjay Mehrotra, Qualcomm’s Cristiano Amon and Visa’s Ryan McInerney, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the list has not been announced.
A spokesperson for Cisco said CEO Chuck Robbins had been invited by the White House to join the trip but is unable to attend due to the company’s earnings schedule.
The executives will join Trump on the trip during which he has said he hopes to secure a series of business deals and purchase agreements with Beijing.
The summit agenda is expected to cover trade, artificial intelligence, export controls, Taiwan and the Iran war, with both sides entering the talks after weeks of escalating tensions.
Notably absent from the attendees is Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang who said last week in an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer that “We should let the president announce whatever he decides to announce … If invited, it would be a privilege, it would be a great honor to represent the United States.”
General Motors, Disney and Alphabet are also companies with interests in China that the White House did not list as having executives expected to attend.
On Friday Citigroup’s Fraser told CNBC’s Leslie Picker that “I think it’s very important to see engagement” between the two economic superpowers.” Adding, “we all need that engagement to be occurring.”
CNBC
