Over 30 U.S. Business Leaders Gather at the White House for State Dinner
On September 24, Trump hosted a state dinner at the White House for Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is on a state visit to the U.S. from September 23 to 26, marking Xi's first visit to the U.S. in nearly three years. Over 30 business leaders from the U.S. technology, finance, industrial, and consumer sectors were invited, representing some of the largest companies by market value with significant interests in China.
The technology and chip sector was notably represented: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, AMD CEO Lisa Su, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and co-founder Sergey Brin, Amazon Chairman Jeff Bezos, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon, Dell CEO Michael Dell, and Zoom CEO Eric Yuan.
Top figures from finance were almost all present: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon and Executive Vice President John Rogers, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, NYSE President Lynn Martin, Visa CEO Ryan McInerney, Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach, Altimeter founder Brad Gerstner, and TikTok parent company ByteDance's significant shareholder, co-founder of International Holdings Group Jeff Yass.
Representatives from industrial, defense, energy, and consumer sectors included: Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet, GE Aviation CEO Larry Culp, General Motors CEO Mary Barra, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, LVMH Chairman Bernard Arnault, Sands Group major shareholder Miriam Adelson, and Skydance CEO David Ellison. From the government, Vice President Pence, Secretary of State Rubio, House Speaker Johnson, CIA Director Ratcliffe, and Supreme Court Justices Roberts, Barrett, and Kavanaugh attended; from the Chinese side, Cai Qi, Wang Yi, He Lifeng, and Ambassador to the U.S. Xie Feng were present.
The backdrop of the state dinner is a fragile trade truce. U.S. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin announced the extension of the tariff truce, originally set to expire on November 10, to January 10, 2027; tariffs between the two countries had previously risen to over 100% in spring 2025. During Trump's visit to Beijing in May 2026, China promised to purchase 200 Boeing aircraft and at least $17 billion worth of U.S. agricultural products annually from 2026 to 2028, including 25 million tons of soybeans each year, with both sides reducing agricultural tariffs by $30 billion and establishing a "Trade Committee" and "Investment Committee." Topics discussed included Taiwan, Iran, artificial intelligence, and critical minerals, with plans for further meetings in November and December in China and Florida. The welcoming ceremony included 479 military personnel, with two B-1 bombers flying overhead.
In terms of market mechanisms, each CEO entered with clear interests in China. It remains undecided whether NVIDIA's H200 chip will be approved for export to China; Micron was designated as a banned supplier in the critical information infrastructure sector in 2023; nearly half of Qualcomm's revenue comes from China; Apple's and Tesla's core manufacturing bases are in China; Boeing is awaiting fulfillment of its 200 aircraft orders; Visa and Mastercard are vying for the Chinese bank card clearing market. This is an event-driven lobbying window: companies hope to ease export controls and fulfill purchase orders through the summit, with funding concentrated on chips, aviation, and agriculture. Beneficiaries include soybean farmers, Boeing, and consumer and financial companies with lower sensitivity to China; those under pressure include defense contractors listed on China's sanctions list. The attendance of Lockheed Martin's CEO indicates that defense companies are also seeking stable relationship expectations.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
U.S. business leaders collectively "accompanying" the U.S.-China summit has a clear precedent. In September 2015, during Xi Jinping's first state visit to the U.S., he took a photo with about 30 U.S. tech CEOs at Microsoft's campus in Seattle, including Cook, Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Nadella, during which Boeing secured an order for 300 aircraft. In November 2017, during Trump's visit to China, the U.S. and China signed commercial agreements totaling about $253.5 billion. In November 2023, during the APEC meeting in San Francisco, U.S. corporate executives purchased tickets for a dinner with Xi Jinping at $2,000 per person and $40,000 per table. At each summit, businesses exchange attendance for orders and policy windows.
In terms of capital pathways, companies have various demands. NVIDIA estimated a loss of about $4.5 billion due to restrictions on H20 chip exports to China in April 2025, later reaching an arrangement with the U.S. government to exchange a 15% share of sales revenue in China for export licenses, while its market share in China's data center market has been declining. ByteDance's TikTok U.S. operations will be restructured in January 2026, managed by a joint venture with Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX; Jeff Yass's International Holdings holds about 7% of ByteDance, making it one of the largest U.S. stakeholders in the TikTok issue. On Wall Street, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs have obtained full ownership brokerage licenses in China, and BlackRock has established a public fund in China. These companies invest in licenses and market shares, betting on predictable policies.
An earlier historical analogy is the "business lobbying changing China policy" of the 1990s. In 1994, under lobbying from Boeing, General Motors, and other companies, the Clinton administration decoupled China's Most-Favored-Nation status from human rights issues; in 2001, China joined the WTO, allowing U.S. companies to fully enter the Chinese market. Today's landscape is different: chips, artificial intelligence, and defense are categorized under national security, and corporate lobbying can only function in "non-sensitive areas." U.S.-China relations are in a stage of "managed competition": continued decoupling in security areas, with limited repair in trade.
The essence is the restructuring of supply chains: the U.S. and China are splitting the supply chain into "secure" and "non-secure" tracks for separate management. The mechanism is that the "Trade Committee" established at the May Beijing summit is explicitly responsible only for non-sensitive goods, with agricultural products, aircraft, and consumer goods flowing again through purchase commitments and tariff reductions, while chips, artificial intelligence, and critical minerals are mutually restrained by export controls and rare earth restrictions. Managed trade has replaced free trade, with procurement volumes determined by government negotiations rather than market prices. CEOs flocking to the White House state dinner are vying for the gray area between the two tracks: which chips are considered "non-sensitive," and which investments can be released, with boundaries redefined at each summit.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
- The seating at the table is a bargaining chip at the negotiation table.
- Security is security, business is business, and boundaries are determined by the game.
- Tariffs are the stick, orders are the carrot, and CEOs are the megaphones.