Everyone, don’t worry. Jensen Huang is going to China with the President.
After a six-week delay due to the Iran war, President Trump arrived in Beijing on Wednesday for a face-to-face summit with President Xi Jinping, a leader he has deeply liked and respected since his previous administration. According to CNBC, he is bringing with him a cadre of billionaires and other well-compensated CEOs from banking, finance, and technology.
The initial list of billionaires was:
- Elon Musk
- Tim Cook
- Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwartzman
- BlackRock CEO Larry Fink
Executives and presidents of Boeing, Cargill, Citigroup, Coherent, GE Aerospace, Goldman Sachs, Illumina, Mastercard, Meta, Micron, Qualcomm and Visa were also on Trump’s travel list.
But surprisingly, Nvidia and its CEO Jensen Huang were conspicuously absent, even though Trump is famously a big fan of Huang. This led to speculation about what this means for Nvidia’s sales in China. Bloomberg wrote that the disgrace “represents a potential blow to Huang in his bid to sell Nvidia’s AI chips to China, a market he has identified as a $50 billion opportunity.”
But late Tuesday, the New York Times reported that Air Force One intercepted Huang in Alaska en route to China. Voltron, the flight of the rich, is complete.
As Trump put it on Truth Social:
“CNBC incorrectly reported that Nvidia’s great Jensen Huang was not invited to the incredible gathering of the world’s greatest businessmen/women who were proudly heading to China. In fact, Jensen is currently on Air Force One and, unless I told him to go, which is highly unlikely, CNBC’s reporting is incorrect or, as they say in politics, fake news!”
So it’s good to know that the CEO of the world’s most valuable company, the fifth billionaire, will be able to present his company’s case to Chinese leaders this week.
Earlier in the day, when answering reporters’ questions about the war in Iran, Trump revealed something about how he currently views Americans in a more modest way. When asked if he thought about the financial situation of Americans during the conversation, he said, “Not even a little bit,” adding even more bluntly a few seconds later, “I don’t think about the financial situation of Americans.”
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