US President Donald Trump is expected to be accompanied by more than a dozen business leaders, including Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk and Tim Cook of Apple, during his trip to China this week.
The White House on Monday released the list of executives set to travel to China alongside Musk and Cook, including Larry Fink of BlackRock, Kelly Ortberg of Boeing, Dina Powell McCormick of Meta and Ryan McInerney of Visa.
The delegation spans key industries, including aviation, technology, banking and social media, as the Trump administration seeks to negotiate trade agreements and manage the flow of sensitive goods between the world’s two largest economies.
The list also includes Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone, Brian Sikes of Cargill, Jane Fraser of Citi, Jim Anderson of Coherent, Larry Culp of GE Aerospace, David Solomon of Goldman Sachs, Jacob Thaysen of Illumina, Michael Miebach of Mastercard, Sanjay Mehrotra of Micron and Cristiano Amon of Qualcomm.
Additionally, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins was invited but is unable to attend as the company is due to release earnings this week. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was noticeably absent from the list.
Trump will travel to Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping on May 14 and 15 as part of a summit originally slated for late March but pushed back after the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran in a conflict that has since spread across the Middle East.
Proposals for a US-China Board of Trade and Board of Investment are expected to feature in this week’s talks, an initiative championed by the Trump administration.
US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said he highlighted the role a Board of Trade “could play in optimising bilateral trade in non-sensitive goods” in a phone call with Chinese Vice-Premier He Lifeng last month.
The trip will mark Trump’s first trip to China since his 2017 state visit during his first term. He most recently met Xi in South Korea last October, where the two leaders agreed to de-escalate their trade war.
The South China Morning Post reached out to the White House and the Chinese embassy in Washington for further information regarding the delegation list. While the White House did not immediately respond, the Chinese embassy stated it had no further information to share on the matter at this time.
In April, Ortberg said Boeing was hoping the Trump administration would help secure a long-awaited order from China.
Beijing is expected to announce purchases related to Boeing aircraft – China’s first major order since 2017 – as well as American agriculture and energy products, according to a Reuters report on Monday.
White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told Fox News on Monday that several CEOs are joining the trip because Trump “never travels for symbolism alone”.
“The American people can expect more good deals for our country, continued work on the US-China Board of Trade, deals spanning the aerospace, energy, agriculture industries that ultimately will end that practice of shipping jobs overseas and selling out American workers in favour of policies and agreements that put America first and revitalise our economy here at home,” she said. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
