EXCLUSIVE: An hour in the Oval Office with the CEO-in-Chief, President Trump
President Trump can’t believe Jensen Huang doesn’t own his own plane. Hours before he departs for his highly anticipated China summit, the president has been arranging for the billionaire cofounder of Nvidia to join the who’s who of Fortune 500 CEOs preparing to travel to Beijing. Also in the group are Citigroup’s Jane Fraser, arguably the most powerful woman in finance, and Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, who recently gave the president an honorary (if slightly tongue-in-cheek) “Salesman of the Year” award for helping the jetmaker sell hundreds of planes. Huang is a late but welcome addition to the party. For one of America’s most successful CEOs and the man whose company’s chips power the AI boom, the president is happy to make room, and Huang winds up hitching a ride aboard Air Force One, sharing the jet with Elon Musk, among others. The only reason Huang wasn’t included earlier is because he didn’t call to ask. As I sit across the Resolute Desk from the president in the Oval Office while we talk about his upcoming trip, it’s clear that arrangements like this are exactly the kind of deal the president likes to make—quick, informal, and one in which he can declare himself a clear winner. He prides himself on his ability to get anyone on the phone and achieve measurable results, whether he’s talking with a world leader or an American company he wants to help. In a wide-ranging conversation that spanned an hour—and covered topics from tariffs to AI data centers to the war in Iran—the president outlined the broader, top-down dealmaking mentality he’s using to try to reinvigorate the American economy. (A small group of Fortune Media executives joined us in Trump’s office; they did not take part in the interview.) With the help of Wall Street–savvy cabinet members like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Trump has turned old economic norms on their head. The president has been an evangelist for a healthy mix of new revenue stre