Trump Brought 17 CEOs to Beijing, but Only Musk and Huang Got Seats on Air Force One
Seventeen American CEOs flew to Beijing with Trump on May 13. Larry Fink of BlackRock. Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone. Kelly Ortberg of Boeing. Jane Fraser of Citi. Larry Culp of GE Aerospace. David Solomon of Goldman Sachs. Sanjay Mehrotra of Micron. Cristiano Amon of Qualcomm. Brian Sikes of Cargill. Plus senior executives from Visa, Mastercard, Cisco, Coherent, Illumina, and Meta.
Musk was on the plane from the start. Huang got his seat at the last minute, after nearly a year of public lobbying for relaxed chip export rules. Reuters reported he wasn’t going. Trump publicly contradicted them, called Huang personally, and posted on Truth Social naming the executives he was bringing, saying he would ask Xi to “open up” China so “these brilliant people can work their magic.” Huang met the plane in Anchorage.
Both companies have direct China exposure. NVIDIA’s official forecast counts zero revenue from China data centers as long as current export rules stand. Tesla runs its largest factory in Shanghai. Huang’s framing for the trip: “one of the most important summits in human history.” Xi Jinping’s pitch back: China would “only open wider” for foreign business.
The most concrete deliverable announced was a Chinese order for 200 Boeing jets. Analysts had been pricing in 400 to 500. Boeing closed the day down about 4%. The order goes directly to Kelly Ortberg, who was on the trip but not on the plane.
No sweeping tariff resolution. No formal easing of chip export controls. Quiet progress on lower-end H200 licensing was reported around the trip, which is what Huang had been lobbying for. Two ledgers will tell the actual story: Commerce Department licensing on Blackwell chips, and Tesla’s FSD approval in China.
Three competitor sets stayed home. Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, who compete with the cloud workloads NVIDIA’s chips run. Ford and GM, who compete with Tesla on EVs. AMD, which competes with NVIDIA on the chips themselves. Their rivals flew with the President.
NVIDIA closed the week near $226. That’s 9% above where it started the week and 19% above where it sat a month ago. Tesla finished near $445 after a 12% week.
Two CEOs are now negotiating American trade with China, and both have stock prices that just told you they know it. By Friday, that rally was already cooling as it became clear no broad export-control easing was coming.
