Ben Norton Geopolitical Economy
Trump’s summit with President Xi Jinping led to few results, but symbolized how the US lost its trade war. Now top US corporations want to get into the Chinese market. That’s why Trump invited them to his White House dinner.
China’s President Xi Jinping was invited to Washington this September, where he attended a three-day summit with Donald Trump.
This meeting was widely covered in the media, but it led to very few concrete outcomes.
The uneventful summit symbolized two key points: one, the United States has clearly lost the trade war that it waged against China; and two, US corporations are now desperately trying to get access to the massive Chinese market.
The US trade war failed
Trump launched the trade war during his first term as president. It was then largely continued by his Democratic successor, Joe Biden, who hit China’s tech sector with tariffs of up to 100%, while banning the export of AI chips to the Asian giant.
When Trump started his second term in 2025, he drastically escalated the conflict into the equivalent of a nuclear trade war. In April of that year, the White House’s economic war against China peaked, with eye-watering blanket tariffs of 145%.
China defended itself against Trump’s commercial assault, hitting back with reciprocal tariffs at the same level, while also restricting the export of rare earth elements — without which many US companies simply cannot function (especially those in Silicon Valley and the military-industrial complex).
This shocked Washington and the large corporations in whose interests it acts.
Ultimately, the Trump administration was forced to retreat. The trade war backfired, hurting the US economy and conclusively demonstrating that the US is much more dependent on China than vice versa.
It is now widely acknowledged, even by major US media outlets, that Trump lost the trade war.
Trump invites top corporate CEOs to join him on his trip to China
This context is crucial to understand Trump’s trip to China this May.
At this meeting, both sides announced a political stalemate. Tensions are still high, but they described their relationship as one of temporary “strategic stability” — a reference to a term in international relations scholarship, which means that neither side is incentivized to further escalate, as it could backfire and undermine its own security, causing more negative repercussions than positive ones.
What was noteworthy about the US president’s trip to Beijing is that he invited the CEOs of top US corporations to join him.
They stood beside Trump in his meetings with President Xi and other senior Chinese officials.
In fact, when Trump flew to China, he was joined on Air Force One by Elon Musk, the richest oligarch on Earth; and Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, which is now the world’s most valuable corporation by market capitalization, thanks to the AI boom.
This symbolized how US government policy is made by and for these powerful corporations.
Now that the US trade war against China has failed — at least in the short term — these corporations are trying to claw their way into the enormous Chinese market.
At White House dinner with President Xi, Trump again invites top corporate CEOs
Trump’s three-day summit with President Xi in Washington this September led to very few concrete results.
Nevertheless, the highlight of the three-day trip was a dinner held at the White House on 24 September, which featured executives from a veritable who’s who of US corporations.
Trump invited some of the world’s most powerful billionaire oligarchs to literally sit at the table with him and Xi, including Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, and Tim Cook (the executive chairman of Apple, which is the world’s second-most value corporation by market capitalization).
Other prominent corporate executives who were invited to the lavish gala included Mark Zuckerberg (CEO of Meta), Jeff Bezos (executive chairman of Amazon), Sundar Pichai (CEO of Google/Alphabet), Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft), and Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI).
They were joined by the CEOs of major corporations in the military-industrial complex, car industry, Big Oil, Big Pharma, media, and luxury goods sector.
Posted at the bottom of this article is the full list of corporate executives whom the Trump administration invited to the White House dinner with President Xi.
Together, these executives were worth $2.4 trillion. They are the oligarchs on behalf of whom US government policy is made.
Real reason for pause in trade war: Major US corporations could not function without China
China has the world’s largest consumer market, with a population of 1.4 billion people, more than 900 million of whom are in the global middle class.
US corporations like Microsoft have long dominated the Chinese market, but they have been gradually losing market share in recent years, for two main reasons: one, China has developed its own domestic tech firms; and two, the US trade war and tech war led Beijing to retaliate by restricting their access.
Moreover, many US companies are still extremely dependent on China and its vast supply chain.
Tesla makes the majority of its electric vehicles in China (54% as of the first half in 2026), at its huge so-called “gigafactory” in Shanghai.
These US corporations simply could not operate without China.
Trump’s failed nuclear trade war backfired hard, and exposed how dependent the US economy still is on China.
The short-term political-economic truce that the Trump administration has negotiated with China was a matter of necessity for these corporations.
This does not mean that the trade war is over in the long or even the medium term. Washington is seeking to gradually decouple the US economy from China, and the State Department is pushing to create a new global supply chain that excludes the Asian giant.
However, this process will take years, if not decades. This explains the temporary US-China ceasefire, and why Trump has suddenly softened his anti-China rhetoric and smiled for the camera alongside President Xi Jinping.
List of US corporate executives invited by the White House to attend the Trump-Xi dinner on 24 September
Big Tech
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg
Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos
Apple executive chairman Tim Cook
Google/Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
Wall Street
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon
Blackrock CEO Larry Fink
Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon
Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser
NYSE President Lynn Martin
Visa CEO Ryan McInerney
Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach
Military-industrial complex
Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg
Lockheed Martin CEO James Taiclet
GE Aerospace CEO Larry Culp
Other tech companies
Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell
Zoom CEO Eric Yuan
AMD CEO Lisa Su
Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon
Media, film, and television
Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison
Luxury goods
LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault
Big Pharma
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla
Big Oil
ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods
Cars
General Motors CEO Mary Barra
Top Trump donor
Miriam Adelson, widow of Sheldon Adelson, late CEO of Las Vegas Sands
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