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From Meta to Tesla and BlackRock, the US business delegation for President Donald Trump’s summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping this week consists mainly of companies seeking to resolve business issues with the world’s second-largest economy. More than a dozen CEOs and top executives from companies such as Tesla, BlackRock, Illumina, Mastercard and Visa are accompanying Trump on his visit on May 14 and 15. Unlike Trump’s 2017 visit, which was heavy on pomp and trade deals, the scaled-back delegation this time includes companies seeking to advance long-standing business priorities in China, said two people familiar with the preparations who sought anonymity. “Besides Boeing and Cargill being linked to purchase agreements, the others are mainly there to deliver demands on critical input supply,” said Reva Goujon, a geopolitical strategist at Rhodium Group. “This could help the US administration’s messaging that to even be able to discuss a board of investment, China needs to be a reliable investment partner and not weaponise supply.” The US business delegation hopes the summit will generate enough political goodwill to unlock regulatory approvals, market access and investment opportunities, the sources said, as they face broader operational challenges in China beyond commercial dealmaking. US gene-sequencing company Illumina said in a statement that its CEO Jacob Thaysen was honoured to be part of the US business delegation. “This is an opportunity to strengthen relationships and shape the future of precision medicine,” the company said, without elaborating. The other companies did not respond to requests for comment on their goals for outcomes from the summit. A critical precondition for companies to join the trip was having a “tangible ask” that promised a concrete outcome or handshake deal during or after the summit, one of the sources said. Another source cautioned that US firms viewed the summit less as a venue for formal announcements and more as a political opening that could help accelerate regulatory discussions already underway in China. For example, Meta needs to tackle an order last month from China’s powerful state planner to unwind its $2-bn-plus acquisition of artificial intelligence startup Manus, as Beijing tightens scrutiny of US investment in domestic startups developing frontier technologies. China is also weighing curbs on exports of solar manufacturing equipment to the United States, which could threaten plans by US firms such as Tesla to build new factories or expand existing ones to boost local production. In March, Reuters reported that Tesla was looking to buy $2.9bn of equipment for making solar panels from Chinese suppliers such as Suzhou Maxwell Technologies, which was seeking export approval from the commerce ministry. Tesla is also seeking Chinese regulatory clearance to expand the adoption of its Full Self-Driving assistance system in the world’s largest auto market. Its CEO, Elon Musk, has previously acknowledged the difficulties stemming from tech curbs imposed by both US and Chinese authorities, but voiced optimism about receiving such an approval in China this year. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink also arrives in Beijing as a consortium led by the US asset manager faces scrutiny over a planned $23-bn acquisition of ports, including two near the Panama Canal, from Hong Kong conglomerate CK Hutchison . Payment giants Mastercard and Visa are hoping to use the summit to improve their positions in China’s tightly regulated payments market, according to the two sources. One source familiar with the matter said Mastercard was hoping the US government would advocate for a higher stake in its joint venture in China. Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon are also joining the trip as Wall Street firms keep up efforts to deepen access to China’s capital markets. China and the United States may reach a farm deal at the summit to expand Beijing’s purchases of grains and meat, but market watchers do not expect major new soybean purchases beyond those agreed in a deal last October.
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A year ago, US President Donald Trump predicted that towering trade tariffs would bring America’s main economic rival to heel. He is headed to China this week with that ambition blunted by court rulings, narrowing his goals to a few deals on beans, beef and Boeing jets, and enlisting China’s help to resolve his unpopular Iran war, political analysts say. The modest expectations for Trump’s May 14-15 meetings with Xi Jinping — the first since they paused a bruising trade war in October — underscore how Trump’s bombastic approach has failed to deliver an advantage ahead of the talks, according to analysts. Trump “kind of needs China more than China needs him,” said Alejandro Reyes, a professor specialising in Chinese foreign policy at the University of Hong Kong. “He needs a kind of foreign policy victory: a victory that shows that he is looking to ensure stability in the world and that he’s not just disrupting global politics,” Reyes added. Since their last brief meeting at an airbase in South Korea where Trump suspended triple-digit tariffs on Chinese goods and Xi backed away from choking global supplies of rare earths, China has quietly sharpened its economic pressure toolkit aimed at Washington. Trump, meanwhile, has been preoccupied fighting US court rulings against his tariffs and a war with Iran that has sapped his approval ratings ahead of November’s midterm elections. This week’s meeting in the Chinese capital will be a grander occasion, with the leaders set to hold a summit at the Great Hall of the People, tour Unesco-heritage site Temple of Heaven, dine at a state banquet and take tea and lunch together. But the anticipated economic deliverables amount to a handful of deals and mechanisms to manage future trade, while it remains unclear whether the leaders will even agree to extend their trade truce, officials involved in the planning said. Trump will be joined by CEOs including Tesla’s Elon Musk and Apple’s Tim Cook, though the business delegation is smaller than when he last visited Beijing in 2017. Aside from trade, Trump said on Monday he will discuss arms sales to Taiwan and the case of jailed media tycoon Jimmy Lai with Xi. Families of two Americans imprisoned in China for more than a decade are also urging Trump to seek their release. “We used to be taken advantage of for years with our previous presidents, and now we’re doing great with China,” Trump said. “I respect him (Xi) a lot, and hopefully he respects me.” ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHERThe mood music has changed dramatically since Trump declared in a Truth Social post in April 2025 that his tariffs would make China realise that the “days of ripping off” the United States were over. Those levies prompted Beijing to restrict exports of rare earths, brutally exposing the West’s dependency on elements vital to the manufacturing of everything from electric cars to weapons, and eventually led to Trump and Xi’s fragile truce. Since then, Trump has faced countless other battles: capturing Venezuela’s leader, threatening to annex fellow Nato member Greenland and waging a war on Iran that has plunged the Middle East into chaos and stoked a global energy crisis. More than 60% of Americans disapprove of his Iran war, according to a Reuters/Ipsos survey last month. Now, Trump wants China to convince Tehran to make a deal with Washington to end the conflict. China maintains ties with Iran and remains a major consumer of its oil exports. Matt Pottinger, who served as deputy national security advisor during Trump’s first term, told a forum in Taipei last week that while China would like to see an outcome that weakens American power it is not immune to the economic cost of a protracted conflict. But Beijing will want something in return, and top of Xi’s agenda is Taiwan, the democratically governed island claimed by China. While some fear a bargain that could embolden China to take Taiwan by force, even a nuanced change in Washington’s wording would raise anxiety about the commitment of Taipei’s most important backer that would reverberate across other US allies in Asia. Wu Xinbo, a professor at Fudan University in Shanghai who serves on the policy advisory board of China’s foreign ministry, said Trump should make clear that he “won’t support independence or take actions that encourage a separatist political agenda”. ‘SUPERFICIAL CEASEFIRE’China also wants the Trump administration to commit to not taking future retaliatory trade action such as technology export controls, and to roll back existing controls on chipmaking equipment and advanced memory chips, people briefed on the talks said. And since last October, Beijing has been expanding its own economic leverage, such as enacting laws to punish foreign entities that shift supply chains away from China and tightening its rare earth licensing regime. A majority of Americans (53%) now say the United States should undertake friendly co-operation and engagement with China, up from 40% in 2024, according to a survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs published in October. So just keeping relations on an even keel and extending the trade war truce could be enough for Trump to claim a win. That leaves the main outcome likely to be “a superficial ceasefire that is largely to China’s advantage,” said Scott Kennedy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.
