Don’t worry everyone. Jensen Huang is going to China with the president. After a six-week delay due to the Iran war, President Trump arrives in Beijing on Wednesday for a face-to-face summit with President Xi Jinping, a leader he has unabashedly liked and respected since his previous administration. According to CNBC, he’s bringing along a cadre of billionaires and other handsomely compensated chief executives from banking, finance, and tech. The initial list of billionaires was: Elon Musk Tim Cook Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwartzman Blackrock CEO Larry Fink Executives and presidents from Boeing, Cargill, Citigroup, Coherent, GE Aerospace, Goldman Sachs, Illumina, Mastercard, Meta, Micron, Qualcomm, and Visa were also on Trump’s travel manifest.
But rather shockingly, Nvidia and its CEO Jensen Huang were conspicuously absent, even though Trump is famously a big fan of Huang’s. This prompted rampant speculation about what this meant for Nvidia’s sales in China. Bloomberg wrote that the snub “represents a potential setback for Huang in his bid to sell Nvidia’s AI chips to China, a market he’s identified as a $50 billion opportunity.” But late on Tuesday, the New York Times wrote that Air Force One picked up Huang in Alaska on the way to China. The flying Voltron of rich people is complete.
As Trump put it on Truth Social: “CNBC incorrectly reported that the Great Jensen Huang, of Nvidia, was not invited to the incredible gathering of the World’s Greatest Businessmen/women proudly going to China. In actuality, Jensen is currently on Air Force One and, unless I ask him to leave, which is highly unlikely, CNBC’s reporting is incorrect or, as they say in politics, FAKE NEWS!” So it’s nice to know that a fifth billionaire, the CEO of the world’s most valuable company, will be able to plead his company’s case to Chinese leaders this week.
Earlier in the day, when fielding questions from reporters about the war in Iran, Trump revealed a bit about how he currently regards Americans of more modest means. When asked if he thinks about Americans’ financial situations during talks, he said “Not even a little bit,” adding even more bluntly seconds later, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.”
