Washington DC [US], May 13: Beyond high-profile names like Apple's Tim Cook, a number of lesser-known CEOs joining US President Donald Trump on his trip to China this week represent industries caught in the crossfire of the trade war, analysts said, and are expected to push for deeper engagement rather than risk becoming a "geopolitical football".
Seventeen American CEOs have been invited in total, according to a list released by the White House on Monday - a smaller business delegation than in 2017, when 27 high-profile executives joined.
"These companies are looking for engagement, both with China and with the Trump administration," said Kent Kedl, managing partner at Blue Ocean Advisors.
"They all know that they're in sectors with significant exposure to geopolitical tensions between the US and China, and that the future is very unpredictable." The list includes Apple CEO Cook and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, alongside Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, GE Aerospace CEO Larry Culp, Cargill CEO Brian Sikes, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra and Qualcomm CEO and president Cristiano Amon.
Dina Powell McCormick, president and vice-chair of Meta Platforms, Illumina CEO Jacob Thaysen and Coherent CEO Jim Anderson were also on the list. Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins was invited but would be unable to attend as the company's earnings were released this week, a company spokesperson told the media.
"When you can be and have been used as a geopolitical football, you want to get as much insight into the players as possible, so 'engagement' is high on these companies' list of motivations," Kedl said.
Among the most notable absences is Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, which could signal Washington had little appetite to roll back some of its tech export controls on China. In an interview last week, Huang said he would have joined the trip "if invited".
Chen Zhiwu, chair professor of finance at the University of Hong Kong, said the Nvidia chief was "under the spotlight quite regularly". Members of Congress might feel "suspicious" of him trying to "get around tech restrictions", Chen added.
The White House also invited the heads of several US financial giants, including BlackRock's Larry Fink, Blackstone's Stephen Schwarzman, Visa's Ryan McInerney, Goldman Sachs' David Solomon, Citigroup's Jane Fraser and Mastercard's Michael Miebach.
"These financial companies are presumably on the hunt for more liberalisation of China's closed-off finance sector," said Arthur Kroeber, head of research at Gavekal Dragonomics.
With the delegation spanning such a broad range of sectors, analysts said each would have their own priorities shaped by trade frictions and regulatory uncertainty.
Elon Musk, for example, could push for a licence to sell robotaxis as well as room to expand sales of his AI-enabled robots, Kroeber wrote in a note on Tuesday.
"Other tech companies, including GE Aerospace, Micron and optoelectronics firm Coherent, probably want assurance that China will keep up the flow of rare earths and other critical minerals required for their production processes," Kroeber said.
In agriculture and aerospace, Cargill and Boeing would be hoping for announcements on Chinese purchases of soybeans and aircraft, respectively, as well as bilateral investment agreements and a trade truce extension or reduced tariffs, analysts said.
GE Aerospace, meanwhile, is embedded in China's aviation supply chain, making the advanced commercial aircraft engines that power the domestically built Comac C919 passenger jet, through a joint venture with the French company Safran.
"If you look at the company list, those are pretty much the sectors they think could be a piece of the collaboration," said Gary Ng, a senior economist for the Asia-Pacific region at French investment bank Natixis.
"They think if the US-China relationship can stabilise a little, they can benefit from export orders from China or maybe the US can relax some of the risks." James Downes, director of the Europe-Asia programme at the US-based Centre for Explanatory Research and Scientific Prediction think tank, said the CEO line-up signalled a pragmatic push for deals in aviation, agriculture and finance, "prioritising sectors where bilateral trade can yield quick wins in the context of ongoing tensions".
"Overall, this projects Trump as a deal maker-in-chief, using CEOs to soften Xi talks whilst testing China's post-tariff reciprocity," he said.
"An opportunity to negotiate a 'phase one'-style deal exists, with fairly successful odds in food security talks." Some of those representing the advanced tech and biotech sectors could face a complicated trip, however.
Micron, in particular, has been navigating headwinds in China since 2023, when Beijing's cyberspace regulator said its products had failed a network security review and that it would bar operators of critical infrastructure from buying from the company.
"They were in the doghouse for quite a while," said Ker Gibbs, a former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, adding Micron would be seeking a "restart" in the world's second-largest economy.
Source: Qatar Tribune
