Key facts
- Chinese President Xi Jinping is unlikely to bring a business delegation of chief executives to the US this week.
- The absence of Chinese executives is due to a lack of agreement on potential investment deals and trade tensions.
- US tech executives are expected to attend a state dinner with Xi.
- Trump has expressed anticipation for the summit and expects to notch "a lot of different deals."
President Xi Jinping is not expected to bring a delegation of Chinese chief executives to the United States for his upcoming summit with President Donald Trump, according to a senior US administration official. The absence of Chinese business leaders raises questions about the prospects for the world's two largest economies to strike new business deals.
The lack of agreement on a planned bilateral Board of Investment and differences over potential Chinese investments in the US have put the business delegation in doubt. The summit is scheduled for September 24, with a state dinner to follow, where many prominent technology executives are expected to be present.
US executives expected to attend include Mark Zuckerberg of Meta Platforms, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, Tim Cook of Apple, Elon Musk of Tesla, Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, and Michael Dell of Dell Technologies. Jane Fraser of Citigroup and Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase are also slated to participate.
Trump has expressed anticipation for the summit, calling Xi's visit a "great honor" and highlighting his rapport with the Chinese leader. He told reporters last week that he expected to notch "a lot of different deals" during the summit. The meeting occurs at a politically sensitive time for Trump, whose party faces midterm elections in November, while Xi is approaching an expected fourth term amid a slowing Chinese economy.
Tensions have grown between Washington and Beijing over issues including artificial intelligence, critical mineral exports, and Taiwan. Earlier this week, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer indicated that the US and China remained divided on the terms of a trade truce extension.