Elon Musk, Tim Cook and Larry Fink expected to join Trump’s entourage to Beijing this week
Prominent U.S. executives from Big Tech to agriculture have been invited to join President Donald Trump on his trip to China this week, according to a White House official. Trump leaves on Tuesday for Beijing to meet with President Xi Jinping. Aside from discussions about Iran, the two leaders are expected to discuss trade and artificial intelligence. Here’s a look at some of the executives according to the White House official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. Elon Musk Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, led Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency until leaving in the spring of 2025 before the controversial pop-up agency was shuttered in November. The billionaire, who also owns the social media platform X, feuded with Trump last summer in a war of words that included Musk claiming without evidence that the government was concealing information about the president’s association with infamous pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Musk eventually said that he regretted some of his posts on X about Trump. Since then, Musk has refocused his energy on Tesla and his other companies. Tesla has operations in China and Musk has visited there. He’s also been dealing with French prosecutors seeking charges against him and X for child sexual abuse images on the platform, deepfakes, disinformation and complicity in denying crimes against humanity by the platform’s artificial intelligence system, Grok. There’s also trial pitting Musk against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Tim Cook Cook remains busy as his tenure at Apple winds down. The CEO announced last month that his 15-year reign as the head of the technology company will come to an end on Sept. 1, when he turns the CEO duties over to Apple’s head of hardware engineering, John Ternus. During Cook’s years as the top executive, Apple saw the its market value soar by more than $3.6 trillion during an iPhone-fueled era of prosperity. Cook will remain with the company a