Why Nvidia’s Jensen Huang didn’t make it to Trump’s list of CEOs for China visit

Tomorrow (May 13), United States President Donald Trump will be making the long trek to China to meet his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. This will be the first visit by an American president to the Asian nation in almost nine years.

A Chinese foreign ministry statement said: “At the invitation of President Xi Jinping, President of the United States of America Donald J Trump will pay a state visit to China from May 13 to 15.” According to principal deputy press secretary Anna Kelly,Trump would arrive in Beijing on Wednesday evening (local time). Then the US leader will attend a welcome ceremony and a bilateral meeting with Xi on Thursday, followed by a visit to the Temple of Heaven and a state banquet. The two will meet again on Friday for a tea and working lunch, noted the US official.

However, Trump isn’t going alone. He’s invited a group of billionaires to join him on his China visit, including Elon Musk and Apple’s Tim Cook. But there’s one notable absence — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

This has got us wondering: Who’s been invited and who’s been left out?

What’s on the agenda for Trump’s China visit?

There’s a lot of buzz around US President Trump’s visit to China, which was initially scheduled for March. Taiwan, tariffs, rare earths, and the war in Iran are among the big matters that the two leaders are expected to discuss.

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Beijing is keen to make sure that the sky-high tariffs that the US leader announced last year — which reached as high as 145 per cent before the two sides agreed a truce in October — do not return. However, the most pressing issue that the two leaders will most likely discuss is the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Half of China’s crude oil passes through this chokepoint.

Apart from this, there’s also the question of arms sales to Taiwan. Last year, the US Congress approved an $11 billion arms sale package to Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing claims as part of its territory. That has reportedly been stalled by the state department ahead of the Trump-Xi summit, but Beijing would like it axed completely.

Talking to the media ahead of his visit, Trump said that he respects Xi Jinping a lot and hoped the Chinese leader too feels the same about him.

A salesperson takes a plastic figure depicting US President Donald Trump displayed in a showcase for sale in a store in Beijing ahead of his visit to China. AFP

Who’s accompanying Trump to China?

When Trump travels to China tomorrow (May 13), he will be joined by 16 executives, whose combined worth is over $870 billion.

According to the White House, the group of business leaders set to accompany Trump includes Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is worth $823.3 billion, Apple CEO Tim Cook, BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink, and Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg.

Other high-profile CEOs joining the trip are Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon and Citigroup’s Jane Fraser. While Cisco’s Chuck Robbins has also been invited, the company noted that he wouldn’t be going due to the company’s earnings schedule.

Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk will accompany US President Donald Trump to China. File image/Reuters

The inclusion of Musk in the delegation is the latest sign that the world’s richest man has restored his relationship with the American leader. Earlier, the world’s richest man served as a top adviser to Trump but departed the administration in May 2025 after a falling out with the president.

What are these CEOs likely to gain from the China visit?

According to a Bloomberg report, the executives joining Trump are all from companies with significant existing China exposure and represent sectors expected to be part of the trip’s commercial agenda.

For instance, Ortberg told Reuters in April that Boeing was counting on the Trump administration to help unlock a long-awaited major order from China. China and the US planemaker have been in prolonged talks for a deal that industry sources say could include 500 737 MAX jets, plus dozens of widebody jets powered by GE engines. It would be the country’s first major Boeing order since 2017, and any announcement of the order would be viewed as a major win for the leaders’ summit. It could also represent the single largest airplane order in history.

Who’s not going with Trump to China?

While 16 executives have been invited to accompany Trump to China, the absence of one name has raised eyebrows — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

General Motors, Disney, and Alphabet are also companies with interests in China that the White House did not list as having executives expected to attend.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang last week had noted that he would be "honoured" to represent the US on Trump's China visit. File image/Reuters

But why is Huang’s absence notable?

Huang’s name missing from the list of executives travelling with Trump has raised eyebrows. That’s because the Nvidia boss had told CNBC last week that “if invited, it would be a privilege, ​it would be a great honour to represent the United States”.

His absence stands out even more given his role as head of the world’s most valuable company and maker of semiconductors powering the artificial intelligence boom — not to mention his proximity to Trump since the president’s return to office. Interestingly, when King Charles visited the US last month, reportedly a senior White House official personally texted Huang to invite him to a state dinner tied to the royal visit.

As per a Reuters report, the reason for Huang missing out on an invite is that the White House is focusing more on agriculture and commercial aviation matters, such as orders for Boeing planes, on the current trip.

Additionally, Nvidia currently sits at the centre of the growing technology battle between Washington and Beijing. The company’s AI chips have become a major issue in the wider US-China rivalry over advanced technology and export restrictions.

As Ryan Fedasiuk, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Bloomberg, the decision to keep Huang off the official delegation list sends a strong signal to Beijing that Chinese AI labs won’t have much success in obtaining top-performing chips like those made by Nvidia. “The Trump administration understands how important computing power is to winning the AI race with China,” Fedasiuk said. “There just isn’t much for American chip companies to talk about with the Chinese government.”

According to invezz.com, the reason for Huang’s name missing is mainly owing to Nvidia’s China market share. Last year, Huang noted that Nvidia’s China market share had fallen from 95 per cent to 50 per cent from the start of the Biden administration, and he later described the advanced AI chip market share in China as zero. The company’s latest annual report further noted that it was “effectively foreclosed” from competing in China’s data centre computing market. In other words, there was little left for Huang to negotiate on this trip, even if he had been invited.

Now, all eyes will turn to Beijing tomorrow (May 13) for the Trump-Xi meeting. However, most analysts believe that only modest outcomes could be expected. Wendy Cutler, a trade diplomat and vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute, in the Geoeconomic Competition podcast noted, “This year, we may see a number of meetings between Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping, and so all the deliverables don’t have to be announced at the first meeting.”

With inputs from agencies