High U.S. executives journey to China aboard Air Force One with Trump

Prominent U.S. executives from Big Tech and Wall Street to agriculture and aerospace are becoming a member of President Trump on his journey to China this week.

Trump arrived in Beijing Wednesday to satisfy with President Xi Jinping. Aside from discussions about Iran, the 2 leaders are anticipated to debate commerce and synthetic intelligence.

Here’s a have a look at a few of the executives, in keeping with the White House official, who was not approved to remark publicly and spoke on the situation of anonymity.

Elon Musk

Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, led Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency till leaving within the spring of 2025 earlier than the controversial pop-up company was shuttered in November. The billionaire, who additionally owns the social media platform X, feuded with Trump final summer time in a disagreement that included Musk claiming with out proof that the federal government was concealing details about the president’s affiliation with notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Musk finally mentioned that he regretted a few of his posts on X about Trump.

Since then, Musk has refocused his vitality on Tesla and his different corporations. Tesla has operations in China and Musk has visited there. He’s additionally been coping with French prosecutors searching for costs in opposition to him and X for baby sexual abuse photos on the platform, deepfakes, disinformation and complicity in denying crimes in opposition to humanity by the platform’s synthetic intelligence system, Grok. There’s additionally trial pitting Musk in opposition to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Musk traveled to China on Air Force One with Trump.

Tim Cook

Cook stays busy as his tenure at Apple winds down. The CEO introduced final month that his 15-year reign as the pinnacle of the expertise firm will come to an finish on Sept. 1, when he turns the CEO duties over to Apple’s head of {hardware} engineering, John Ternus. During Cook’s years as the highest government, Apple noticed the its market worth soar by greater than $3.6 trillion throughout an iPhone-fueled period of prosperity. Cook will stay with the corporate as government chairman.

Apple’s reliance on abroad manufacturing required Cook to grasp the artwork of political diplomacy, notably whereas Trump waged commerce wars with China throughout each his phrases within the White House. After persuading Trump to exempt the iPhone and different merchandise from Trump’s first-term tariffs, he confronted a extra daunting problem through the present administration.

While insisting that Apple shift its iPhone manufacturing from China to the U.S., Trump imposed some tariffs on the system this time round. But Cook nonetheless managed to attenuate the charges by shifting the manufacturing of iPhones destined for the U.S. market to India and likewise profitable some exemptions after promising Apple would make investments $600 billion within the U.S. throughout Trump’s second administration.

Jensen Huang

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang heads to Beijing simply months after the corporate acquired approval to promote one in every of its highly effective AI chips to China, with circumstances.

In January the Trump administration positioned new safety necessities on Nvidia’s semiconductor gross sales to China, however primarily greenlit the export of its H200 synthetic intelligence chips.

Nvidia should guarantee that there’s an satisfactory provide within the U.S., and the H200 chips should bear a third-party overview earlier than being exported to China, in keeping with new guidelines set by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security. But the brand new guidelines decrease the bar for exports.

China gained’t be allowed to make use of the chips for navy functions and isn’t allowed to import greater than 50% of the chips offered to U.S. clients.

The H200 isn’t Nvidia’s most superior product. Those chips, known as Blackwell and the upcoming Rubin, weren’t a part of the accepted chips for export.

Huang additionally traveled aboard Air Force One with Trump to China.

Kelly Ortberg

Robert “Kelly” Ortberg, a former CEO at aerospace producer Rockwell Collins, grew to become CEO of Boeing in 2024. He’s hung out specializing in Boeing’s restoration, because the aerospace firm was coping with authorized, regulatory and manufacturing issues and mounting monetary repercussions when he took over.

A 12 months in the past Ortberg mentioned that he didn’t count on the U.S. commerce battle with China to forestall Boeing’s monetary restoration, nor stop it from reaching plane supply targets with Chinese airways that had been refusing to simply accept its planes. Beijing elevated its import tax on American items to 125% in April 2025 in retaliation for Trump elevating the tariff on merchandise made in China to 145%. China’s tariff would greater than double the price of passenger jets that Boeing, the U.S.’ largest exporter, sells for tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars}. But Beijing is much less of a risk to Boeing now that it was once, because it has began to ship fewer of its completed planes there over time.

Boeing has been in ongoing talks with China over a doable giant plane sale.

Who else goes

Blackrock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink

Blackstone Chairman, CEO and co-founder Stephen Schwarzman

Cargill Chairman and CEO Brian Sikes

Citi Chairman and CEO Jane Fraser

Coherent CEO Jim Anderson

GE Aerospace Chairman and CEO H. Lawrence Culp

Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO David Solomon

Illumina CEO Jacob Thaysen

Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach

Meta President and Vice Chairman Dina Powell McCormick

Micron Chairman, President and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra

Qualcomm President and CEO Cristiano Amon

Visa CEO Ryan McInerney

Chapman writes for the Associated Press. AP author Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.