Donald Trump arrives in Beijing today for a summit with Xi Jinping – and is bringing tech CEOs, including Elon Musk, along for the ride.
‘We’re the two superpowers,’ Trump told reporters as he departed the White House on Tuesday. ‘We’re the strongest nation on Earth in terms of military. China’s considered second.’
The visit occurs at a delicate moment for his presidency, as his popularity at home is weighed down by the US and Israel’s war with Iran and rising inflation as a consequence of that conflict.
The president is seeking a win by signing deals with China to buy more American food and aircraft, saying he will be talking with Xi about trade ‘more than anything else’.
The Trump administration hopes to begin the process of establishing a Board of Trade with China to address differences between the countries.
Also aboard Air Force One were a range of aides, family members and business titans, including Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Tesla and SpaceX’s Elon Musk.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, Larry Fink of BlackRock and executives from Meta, Visa, JP Morgan, Boeing and Cargill will also attend the summit.
Goldman Sachs, Citi and Illumina will also have top executives meet in Beijing, riding along with Trump.
The President wrote on Truth Social: ‘It is an Honor to have Jensen, Elon, Tim Apple, Larry Fink, Stephen Schwarzmann, Kelly Ortberg (Boeing), Brian Sikes (Cargill), Jane Fraser (Citi), Larry Culp (GE Aerospace), David Solomon (Goldman Sachs), Sanjay Mehrotra (Micron), Cristiano Amon (Qualcomm), and many others journeying to the Great Country of China where I will be asking President Xi, a Leader of extraordinary distinction, to ‘open up’ China so that these brilliant people can work their magic, and help bring the People’s Republic to an even higher level!’
An estimate from Forbes found that the group of executives have a net worth of more than $870 billion.
Brett Ratner, the director who produced Melania Trump’s self-titled film, is also headed to China after appearing in the Epstein files.
Trump is heading to Beijing at a time when Iran continues to dominate his domestic agenda.
The war has led to the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, stranding oil and natural gas tankers and causing energy prices to spike to levels that could sabotage global economic growth.
The US president declared that Xi did not need to assist in resolving the conflict, even though Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, was in Beijing last week.
‘We have a lot of things to discuss. I wouldn’t say Iran is one of them, to be honest with you, because we have Iran very much under control,’ Trump told reporters on Tuesday.
The status of Taiwan also appears to be a major topic as China is displeased with US plans to sell weapons to the self-governing island that the Chinese government claims as part of its own territory.
Trump told reporters on Monday that he would be discussing an $11 billion weapons package for Taiwan that the US administration authorised in December.
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