Musk, Cook and other prominent US executives invited to join Trump on trip to China
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11:43 AM on Tuesday, May 12
By MICHELLE CHAPMAN
Prominent U.S. executives from Big Tech to agriculture have been invited to join President Donald Trump on his trip to China this week, according to a White House official.
Trumpleaves on Tuesday for Beijing to meet with President Xi Jinping. Aside from discussions about Iran, the two leaders are expected to discuss trade and artificial intelligence.
Here's a look at some of the executives according to the White House official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, led Trump's Department of Government Efficiency until leaving in the spring of 2025 before the controversial pop-up agency was shuttered in November. The billionaire, who also owns the social media platform X, feuded with Trump last summer in a war of words that included Musk claiming without evidence that the government was concealing information about the president’s association with infamous pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Musk eventually said that he regretted some of his posts on X about Trump.
Since then, Musk has refocused his energy on Tesla and his other companies. Tesla has operations in China and Musk has visited there. He's also been dealing with French prosecutors seeking charges against him and X for child sexual abuse images on the platform, deepfakes, disinformation and complicity in denying crimes against humanity by the platform’s artificial intelligence system, Grok. There's also trial pitting Musk against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Cook remains busy as his tenure at Apple winds down. The CEO announced last month that his 15-year reign as the head of the technology company will come to an end 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 top executive, Apple saw the its market value soar by more than $3.6 trillion during an iPhone-fueled era of prosperity. Cook will remain with the company as executive chairman.
Apple’s reliance on overseas manufacturing required Cook to master the art of political diplomacy, particularly while Trump waged trade wars with China during both his terms in the White House. After persuading Trump to exempt the iPhone and other products from Trump’s first-term tariffs, he faced a more daunting challenge during the current administration.
While insisting that Apple shift its iPhone manufacturing from China to the U.S., Trump imposed some tariffs on the device this time around. But Cook still managed to minimize the fees by shifting the production of iPhones destined for the U.S. market to India and also winning some exemptions after promising Apple would invest $600 billion in the U.S. during Trump’s second administration.
Robert “Kelly” Ortberg, a former CEO at aerospace manufacturer Rockwell Collins, became CEO of Boeing in 2024. He's spent time focusing on Boeing's recovery, as the aerospace company was dealing with legal, regulatory and production problems and mounting financial repercussions when he took over.
A year ago Ortberg said that he didn't expect the U.S. trade war with China to forestall Boeing's financial recovery, nor prevent it from reaching aircraft delivery targets with Chinese airlines that were refusing to accept its planes. Beijing increased its import tax on American goods to 125% in April 2025 in retaliation for Trump raising the tariff on products made in China to 145%. China’s tariff would more than double the cost of passenger jets that Boeing, the U.S.’ largest exporter, sells for tens of millions of dollars. But Beijing is less of a threat to Boeing now that it used to be, as it has started to send fewer of its finished planes there over time.
Boeing has been in ongoing talks with China over a possible large aircraft sale.
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
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Aamer Madhani in Washington D.C. contributed to this report.
