May 11 (UPI) — President Donald Trump will be accompanied by 16 senior executives of U.S. companies for his trip to Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The White House on Monday shared a list of the executives, which include Tesla’s Elon Musk, Apple’s Tim Cook, BlackRock’s Larry Fink and Boeing’s Kelly Ortberg, among others.
Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins was unable to join the trip, however executives from Blackstone, Cargill, Citigroup, Coherent, GE Aerospace, Goldman Sachs, Illumina, Matstercard, Meta, Micron Technology, Qualcomm and Visa will also travel to China with Trump.
Trump is expected to discuss trade, artificial intelligence, Taiwan and the Iran War, with the creation of a board of investment and a board of trade with China high on his list of goals for his meetings with Xi.
“We’re doing a lot of business [with China], but it’s smart business,” Trump told reporters during a press briefing in the Oval Office on Monday.
“We used to be taken advantage of for years with our previous presidents,” he said. “And now we’re doing great with China. We make a lot of Monday with China.”
The U.S. caravan will depart for Beijing on Tuesday, with meetings scheduled for the rest of the week between the two delegations.
Each of the executives traveling for the meetings has significant business interests in China, which is why they were asked to join Trump for the trip, White House officials have said.
