The Business Delegation Behind Trump's China Summit: What Every CEO Wants

By Bloomberg News | May 13, 2026

When Air Force One touched down at Beijing Capital International Airport on Wednesday evening, it carried the CEOs of companies with a combined market capitalization exceeding $10 trillion. Each of them had a reason to be there that had nothing to do with diplomacy.

Trump has framed the delegation as a show of American business confidence. In a social media post ahead of departure, he promised Xi Jinping he would make "opening up" China his very first request, calling the assembled executives "brilliant people" who would "work their magic."

What follows is what each of them actually came to get.

Jensen Huang -- Nvidia Corp.

The Cost of the Embargo

Huang was added to the manifest at the last minute. That decision may matter more than any bilateral agreement signed this week.

Nvidia's H20 chip, a downgraded version of its flagship AI accelerator built specifically to satisfy US export controls, was banned from sale to China by the Biden administration. Trump kept the ban. Nvidia lost an estimated $15 billion in annual revenue from a market that once represented roughly 25% of its total sales.

Huang is not in Beijing to reverse that. Chip export controls are a national security determination, not a trade negotiation. He is there to make two arguments simultaneously: to Xi, that American AI companies have a commercial interest in re-engagement; and to Trump, that the embargo is accelerating the domestic Chinese alternative it was designed to prevent.

Every quarter Nvidia is locked out of China is a quarter Huawei's Ascend chips compound their installed base.

Elon Musk -- Tesla Inc.

The Shanghai Dependency

No executive on this plane has more riding on the outcome than Musk, and few have less leverage to apply.

Tesla's Gigafactory Shanghai produces roughly half of the company's global vehicle output. In 2025, China represented approximately 22% of Tesla's total revenue. That concentration has given Beijing a durable pressure point, one it has used before. During previous trade tensions, Chinese regulators launched safety investigations into Tesla vehicles at moments that observers broadly read as political signaling.

Musk's asks are specific: continued access to Chinese battery supply chains, preferential terms for a potential factory expansion, and regulatory clearance for Tesla's Full Self-Driving software, which remains blocked in China pending a data-localization agreement. He would also like Starlink to enter the Chinese market, though he has never said so publicly, and is unlikely to raise it directly here.

Tim Cook -- Apple Inc.

Ninety Percent

The number that defines Cook's presence on this trip is 90. That is the approximate share of Apple products assembled in China, principally through Foxconn's Zhengzhou complex.

China is also Apple's third-largest revenue market at roughly $70 billion annually, a figure under pressure as Huawei's resurgent smartphone lineup takes back premium share that Apple captured during Huawei's years under US sanctions. Cook has spent three years publicly executing a supply chain pivot to India and Vietnam. Analysts put the timeline for getting China below 50% of Apple's manufacturing base at a decade or more.

Until then, Cook needs Beijing to keep the factories running, the customs clearances moving, and the App Store operating on terms that do not systematically disadvantage Apple relative to domestic competitors. He also wants relief from data localization rules that have handed operational control of iCloud China to a state-owned partner, a structure Apple has tolerated because the alternative was being locked out of the market entirely.

Larry Fink -- BlackRock Inc.

The Distribution Problem

BlackRock became the first global asset manager to receive approval for a wholly foreign-owned mutual fund business in China in 2021. The company entered the market with an institutional-grade brand, significant capital, and no way to reach retail investors at scale.

The problem is distribution. China's retail wealth management market flows primarily through state-owned bank branches. Foreign firms without distribution agreements inside that network are competing for a customer base they cannot efficiently reach. BlackRock has the product. It does not have the shelf space.

Fink is in Beijing to advance those distribution conversations, and to argue more broadly that China's continued integration into global capital markets requires reciprocal access for foreign asset managers. The $70 trillion wealth management market Beijing is projecting by 2030 is the prize. Getting inside the distribution infrastructure is the condition.

Steve Schwarzman -- Blackstone Inc.

The Exit Problem

Schwarzman invested $450 million in the Schwarzman Scholars program at Tsinghua University. That was not philanthropy in any conventional sense. It was relationship infrastructure, and for years it worked. Blackstone had access and deal flow in China that competitors could not replicate through ordinary channels.

The problem now is not access. It is exit.

Blackstone's China real estate portfolio, built during the boom years, has been caught in a property crisis with no clear floor. The firm's ability to sell those positions has been complicated by capital controls and by a broader cooling of foreign private equity activity that Beijing has let harden into policy. Schwarzman is in Beijing to negotiate the terms of a managed unwind, and to establish whether Blackstone can redeploy capital in sectors the government is actively promoting: infrastructure, logistics, advanced manufacturing.

Kelly Ortberg -- Boeing Co.

The Planes Beijing Won't Accept

China was Boeing's largest single-country customer before the trade war. Chinese airlines had outstanding orders for hundreds of 737 MAX and 787 Dreamliner aircraft. Most of those orders were delayed, diverted to Airbus, or quietly cancelled as the relationship deteriorated.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China recertified the 737 MAX in late 2023. Deliveries have not normalized. Chinese carriers have cited documentation disputes and parts availability, but those are operational friction points in a process that is ultimately political. Boeing does not control the timeline. Beijing does.

Ortberg took over in 2024 to manage a company already burdened by production failures and a damaged safety reputation. He cannot afford to write off China. Analysts estimate that a full normalization of Chinese deliveries would add $5 billion to $8 billion in near-term revenue recognition. He is in Beijing to ask Xi's government to let the planes move.

Brian Sikes -- Cargill Inc.

The Agricultural Reset

Cargill is the only private company in the delegation. That makes Sikes the least visible executive on the plane and, for Trump's immediate political purposes, one of the most useful.

When Trump imposed tariffs in 2018, Beijing redirected China's soybean import program toward Brazil. American farmers lost an estimated $27 billion in export revenue over the following two years. The damage was concentrated in exactly the states Trump needs. A visible agricultural reset with China, in the form of large-scale purchase commitments, is one of the most legible wins he can bring home from this trip.

Cargill is the logistics and trading infrastructure through which that commerce moves. Sikes is in Beijing to ensure that any purchase commitments agreed at the leader level are structured as real contracts, with volumes, timelines, and delivery terms that translate into revenue for American producers rather than announcements that fade.

Jane Fraser -- Citigroup Inc.

The Only Big Bank in the Room

Fraser's presence is notable partly for what it signals about who is absent. She is the only major Wall Street bank CEO on the plane, which reflects how differently banks have positioned their China exposure since 2021.

Citigroup has one of the largest operational networks in China among US banks, spanning corporate banking, treasury services, and securities. What it lacks is a full securities underwriting license, the authorization that would allow it to compete for China's most lucrative capital markets mandates alongside domestic banks that currently dominate that business.

That licensing conversation is Fraser's primary agenda. She is also there because Citigroup's trade finance and treasury infrastructure is embedded in the supply chains represented by nearly every other executive on this plane. A successful summit is good for Citigroup's existing China business whether or not the licensing question moves.

Larry Culp -- GE Aerospace

The COMAC Problem

GE Aerospace's CFM International joint venture, shared with France's Safran, supplies jet engines to Chinese commercial aviation under licensing agreements that represent some of the most durable commercial ties between the two countries. That relationship predates the trade war and has survived it.

The risk now is forward-looking. US export controls have created legal uncertainty about whether next-generation CFM engines can be sold into China at all. Separately, China's COMAC C919 narrowbody is maturing as a direct competitor to the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320, and Beijing has strong incentives to source its propulsion technology domestically once domestic alternatives reach commercial viability.

Culp wants export control clarity and an explicit signal that COMAC's growth will not translate into a systematic displacement of foreign engine suppliers through procurement policy. He is also the implicit representative of the hundreds of US aerospace component manufacturers whose parts flow through GE Aerospace into Chinese aviation.

David Solomon -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

The Bet That Has Not Paid Off Yet

Goldman Sachs was the first US bank to receive approval for a wholly owned securities business in China, buying out its joint venture partner in 2020. It was a deliberate, expensive signal of long-term commitment.

The timing has been difficult. China's capital markets have underperformed during a prolonged domestic deceleration, and Goldman's M&A advisory business in China has contracted sharply as Chinese companies pulled back from cross-border transactions under geopolitical pressure. The pipeline Goldman was positioning to capture has not materialized on the expected schedule.

Solomon is in Beijing to defend the thesis. He wants expanded business scope, specifically a derivatives license and competitive access to the interbank bond market, and he is positioning Goldman to be the primary beneficiary when Chinese companies eventually return to US capital markets for equity and debt issuance. That pipeline has been effectively closed since 2021. A summit-driven thaw is the precondition for it reopening.

Sanjay Mehrotra -- Micron Technology Inc.

Retaliation, Formalized

In May 2023, China's Cyberspace Administration declared Micron products a national security risk and barred the company from selling memory chips to operators of critical information infrastructure in China. The ruling cost Micron approximately $3.3 billion in annual revenue, roughly 11% of total sales.

The cybersecurity rationale was formal cover. The actual driver was retaliation for US export controls on advanced semiconductors. Micron was the designated casualty, chosen because it was the most exposed American chip company to a targeted Chinese countermeasure.

Mehrotra is not expecting the ban to be lifted this week. He is in Beijing to establish that lifting it is a condition of any comprehensive trade normalization, and to prevent it from being treated as a settled matter that the US side has already accepted.

Cristiano Amon -- Qualcomm Inc.

The Royalty Business Beijing Controls

Qualcomm's China exposure is different in kind from every other technology company on this plane. The revenue at risk is not primarily from chip sales. It is from royalties.

Qualcomm licenses its wireless patents to Chinese smartphone manufacturers: Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and others. Every device those companies ship that incorporates Qualcomm's cellular technology generates a licensing fee. That royalty stream produces margins that no hardware business can match, and it depends entirely on Chinese regulators maintaining a legal environment that enforces patent licensing agreements.

Beijing has used that dependency before. In 2015, Chinese antitrust authorities forced Qualcomm to accept reduced royalty rates for Chinese manufacturers as the price of continued market access. Amon is in Beijing to keep that from happening again. He is also protecting Qualcomm's growing chip business in Chinese automotive and IoT markets, which has become more important as Huawei's domestic chip development has displaced Qualcomm from China's premium smartphone segment.

What the Delegation Tells Xi

Twelve executives. A combined market capitalization that exceeds the GDP of every country except the United States and China itself. All of them on the same plane, at the same moment.

Beijing will not read this as proof of American goodwill. It will read it as a map of American vulnerability. Each CEO who boarded Air Force One identified a specific dependence that China can manage, pressure, or withhold. Xi enters the Great Hall of the People tomorrow morning knowing exactly where the leverage is, because the US president brought it with him and put it in a list on social media.

That does not make the trip a mistake. It makes it a negotiation. And the side that knows what the other side needs is the side that controls the terms.