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Washington: A high-powered delegation of American business leaders including Elon Musk will accompany US President Donald Trump on his visit to China this week, as the two leaders prepare to discuss the sensitive topic of arms sales to Taiwan.
The Tesla and SpaceX boss will be joined by outgoing Apple chief executive Tim Cook, Blackrock’s Larry Fink, Goldman Sachs’ chairman and CEO David Solomon and Boeing’s president and chief executive Kelly Ortberg, among others.
The list of 17 people, several of whom are billionaires, was confirmed by a White House official as Trump prepares to leave for Beijing tomorrow.
Two women are in the delegation: Dina Powell, the president and vice-chair of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, and Trump’s former deputy national security adviser, as well as Jane Fraser, the chief executive of Citigroup.
The US and China are expected to formally announce a Board of Trade and Board of Investment at or after the summit, and discuss additional agreements on industries including aerospace, agriculture and energy.
The White House wants Beijing to agree to purchase more soybeans from American farmers, as well as Boeing aircraft. It follows a thawing of trade relations during a brief meeting in Busan, South Korea last year in which Trump agreed to lower tariffs and Xi relaxed export controls on rare earths.
While Trump wants to focus on business deals between the world’s two largest economies, the Beijing summit will also feature significant discussions about the war in Iran and the status of Taiwan, over which China has long claimed ownership.
“It always comes up,” Trump said on Monday (US time), adding that he did not want to see any aggression from Beijing akin to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“I don’t want that to happen … We’re very far away. We’re 9500 miles, he [Xi] is 67 miles. It’s a little bit of a difference. But there’s a lot of support for Taiwan from Japan, from countries in that area.”
Asked whether he believed the US should still sell weapons to Taiwan, Trump said: “Well, I’m going to have that discussion with President Xi. President Xi would like us not to, and I’ll have that discussion.”
There has been speculation among foreign policy analysts that Trump could change US policy on Taiwan, or restrict arms sales, as part of a grand bargain with Xi on trade and other matters.
However, the Trump administration in December approved the largest ever arms sale to Taiwan, worth $US11.1 billion ($15.3 billion) – a fact that a senior US official highlighted on a briefing call with reporters.
“This administration in its first year has approved significantly more in arms sales to Taiwan than the entire four years of the previous administration,” the senior official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
They also stressed that the US government wanted Taiwan to increase its own defence spending. Its parliament approved a defence budget last week, but it was less than the total sought by the administration in Taipei.
“It was disappointing in that there was some stuff left on the cutting room floor that we believe still needs to be funded,” the US official said. “We’d like to see the rest of the original proposed package funded.”
The official also said they expected US policy on Taiwan to remain unchanged.
“The last couple of times they’ve interacted it has been a point of discussion. There has been no change of US policy coming out of those, and we don’t expect to see any changes in US policy going forward.”
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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