The White House on Monday released a list of 16 top executives invited to join President Trump on his trip to China this week.
The president is set to depart Tuesday for Beijing for a series of meetings expected to last through Friday that will likely touch on issues like increasing AI communication and managing trade.
The list released Monday includes many CEOs with direct business before China. Kelly Ortberg of Boeing (BA) is expected to be along for the trip as additional purchases by China of Boeing planes and engines are widely expected to be announced this week.
Likewise, agricultural giant Cargill will be represented by CEO Brian Sikes, with Chinese agriculture purchases also a topic of discussion.
The inclusion of Elon Musk of Tesla (TSLA) is also sure to garner intense focus after his high-profile fallout with Trump last year — even as the world’s richest man has appeared alongside Trump multiple times in recent months.
Notably absent from the attendees is Nvidia’s (NVDA) Jensen Huang, who is not expected to be in attendance even as China has angled for access to the chipmaker’s leading-edge Blackwell chips.
Huang’s lack of attendance may stem from worries among more hawkish national security leaders in the White House regarding his willingness to push Trump toward opening up the Chinese market, said Henrietta Levin, senior fellow at CSIS and the director for China under the Biden administration’s National Security Council.
The expected list of this week’s attendees, while significant, is also a smaller contingent compared with the groups accompanying Trump on some recent trips.
It was one year ago that Trump traveled to the Middle East and crossed paths with about 60 CEOs while he was there during stops that featured a heavy focus on dealmaking from Saudi Arabia to Qatar to the United Arab Emirates.
The current headcount is also scaled back from Trump’s last visit to Beijing in 2017, during his first term, when the US leader was accompanied by 29 business leaders.
The tightened headcount may come from a schism within the White House between Trump’s personal instinct for “unfettered, enthusiastic” dealmaking with China and administration officials who are more hawkish on national security and don’t want to see US business interests further tied up with Beijing, Levin told Yahoo Finance.
This time around, the White House has tried to downplay expectations for major new deals and investment. A senior US official told reporters on Sunday that “there’s not a proposal out there for some massive investment” from China to the US, saying it “has not been on the negotiating table.”
