Jensen Huang skips Trump’s China business delegation

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang will not join President Donald Trump’s business delegation to China for the upcoming Trump-Xi summit, Reuters reported. The delegation, set to travel to Beijing on May 13, includes Apple CEO Tim Cook and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, with discussions reportedly centered on agriculture, manufacturing, and commercial aviation. Huang’s absence is seen as deliberate, given his previous close ties with the Trump administration, including public appearances and joint overseas trips. The exclusion reduces expectations for progress on AI chip-export disputes, a key friction point in US-China technology relations. NVIDIA’s advanced GPUs face US export restrictions in China, though the company has developed compliant variants and lobbied for balanced trade policies. The delegation’s focus on aviation may include a potential Boeing aircraft order, as Chinese carriers continue to rely on foreign-made planes despite domestic industry growth. Trump’s trip follows months of strained US-China relations, with NVIDIA’s decision to skip the delegation signaling its preference to avoid political entanglement in trade negotiations. Analysts remain divided on the implications for NVIDIA, with some viewing the move as a strategic retreat from lobbying efforts and others as a missed opportunity to ease export restrictions. Despite controls, China remains a critical market for NVIDIA, with data-center revenue growing under regulated hardware. The broader semiconductor sector showed modest gains in pre-market trading Monday, though no major breakthroughs are expected from the summit.