‘the Biggest China Dove In The Administration’: Trump To Test Limits Of Dealmaking In Beijing

American business leaders are frustrated over what they describe as mixed signals from the White House about the role CEOs will play in President Donald Trump’s upcoming trip to Beijing.

The White House has begun sending out invitations to business executives to join events surrounding Trump's summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping next week after deliberating for weeks on the size of the delegation — part of a long-running debate within the administration over how much to encourage private sector engagement with its biggest economic rival.

According to two people briefed by the White House, administration officials in recent weeks circulated a draft list of executives from roughly two dozen companies to potentially participate. However, some officials, including U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, pushed for a group closer to half that size. While the number could still change, the current guest list is tracking closer to that smaller figure, according to the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss private planning discussions. The administration is expected to finalize attendance by the end of this week.

The last-minute decision-making is frustrating some business leaders.

“The president is ‘wheels up’ in about a week. And a week out from the visit … there are still CEOs waiting to find out if they will be part of the president’s trip,” said Sean Stein, the president at the US-China Business Council, which represents more than 270 companies. “We have multiple CEOs who've been told, ‘well maybe you’re going to be invited.’”

The wrangling over the business delegation is just one sign of the delicate balancing act administration officials are trying to strike on the commercial relationship between the world’s two largest economies, with Trump’s desire to tout splashy, high-dollar investment deals with foreign countries at odds with a widening Washington consensus that Chinese investment is a threat to national security.

“The biggest China dove in the administration is the president. He’s always been focused on making deals with China. That’s just who he is — he wants a deal,” said one person close to the White House, who, like others quoted in this story, was granted anonymity to speak candidly about private conversations.

In total, POLITICO spoke to 10 people, including three within the administration and seven who regularly speak with the administration on China and the private sector.

In a statement, White House spokesperson Kush Desai stressed there is no daylight between the president and senior officials on planning for the trip.

“President Trump is set to make a historic visit to China with a delegation of Administration officials and U.S. business leaders, and will be meeting with President Xi and other Chinese officials,” Desai said. “The entire administration is aligned on following the President’s direction to make this trip as historic and productive as possible.”

Chinese officials are expected to dangle lucrative deals during the May 14-15 summit in Beijing, likely in exchange for concessions on U.S. tariffs or other trade restrictions. That runs counter to the decadeslong effort by members of both parties — embraced by many in Trump’s own White House — to crack down on Chinese private sector investment in the U.S., and vice-versa. In that sense, the president’s trip to Beijing is shaping up as a high-stakes test of how far he is willing to lean into business-driven dealmaking with the country’s biggest economic rival — and risk political blowback back home.

Democrats are already going on attack, with more than 70 House members and three senators sending separate letters referencing Trump’s January remarks to the Detroit Economic Club, where he said to “Let China come in,” if they want to build cars on U.S. soil.

“We must not cede the American auto industry to a strategic competitor intent on global dominance,” wrote Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), alongside dozens of colleagues. “This must remain a firm and non-negotiable priority.”

Republicans are also expressing their unease about any potential dealmaking, albeit more diplomatically. Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) joined Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) last week to introduce a measure that would further restrict imports of Chinese-made vehicles and Chinese-developed vehicle technologies.

And more than half a dozen Republican senators including Moreno and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) joined a resolution last week led by Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) to express their concerns over “growing threats” posed by China to U.S. national and economic security more broadly.

“In the run-up to next month’s U.S.-China summit, the United States Senate is sending a clear message: remember who Xi Jinping and the PRC are,” Coons said in a statement, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.

Inside the administration, some advisers are also pushing in that direction, urging the president to maintain limits on Chinese imports like autos as well as on U.S. exports like high-end semiconductors and related technology.

Three people familiar with the discussions say Greer’s insistence on keeping the private business delegation relatively small reflects concerns that a large delegation packed with marquee CEOs could undercut the administration’s broader message on economic competition with China or create pressure for commercial concessions that clash with its national security agenda.

Treasury Secretary Scott “Bessent and Greer are driving the summit’s agenda — but largely keeping business sidelined,” said a Beijing-based business representative, granted anonymity to candidly discuss specific U.S. officials.

Greer, who is traveling to China alongside the president and fellow trade negotiator Bessent, waved off claims during an event last month at the Hudson Institute that the White House would establish a so-called Board of Investment with China, after Reuters reported in March that U.S. and Chinese officials had held discussions about such a body.

“I don’t think we are at the point in our relationship with the Chinese where we want to talk about investment programs either way, right? — we really need to get that trade deficit under control,” he said.

Spokespeople for USTR and the Treasury Department declined to comment.

On the other end, U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue has pushed for months for a larger private sector presence during the president’s visit, according to three people close to the White House.

“The Chinese side was indeed receptive to having business effectively at the table, as it reflected the mutual benefits of the trade and investment relationship,” one of those people said.

A senior White House official shared that sentiment: “I think we want more CEOs to come on the trip. That was my interpretation of just some of the planning meetings. We want as many business leaders as possible.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. embassy in China said in a statement: “Ambassador Perdue and the whole team are focused on making this a historic visit for the President. We are following the lead of the White House and working closely with our Cabinet partners to deliver.”

The indecision has left executives interested in participating in the summit in limbo days ahead of the trip. One prominent American CEO, who does business in China and the U.S., had an aide recently follow up with an administration official to try to join the delegation after getting no response from the White House, that official said. “It’s hard to get in this time,” the official added.

That hasn’t been the case with other foreign summits the president has attended, which have featured large contingents of high-profile business leaders. During Trump’s May 2025 swing through Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, executives including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang participated in events tied to the trip.

Trump has also leaned heavily on foreign direct investment pledges from partners including Japan and South Korea as evidence his economic policies are drawing jobs and industrial production back to the United States.

But China is a different matter, given both the ruling Communist Party ties to the country’s major companies as well as the intensifying U.S.-China rivalry to dominate the next generation of advanced technologies, from AI to robotics to clean tech. The worry is that any major Chinese investment package could extend into sensitive sectors, raising concerns about national security as well as the president’s own stated goals on reshoring U.S production.

“If you’re going to get any kind of significant Chinese investment in the U.S., it’s probably going to be in things like EVs or batteries — which pose national security risks,” said Chris McGuire, a senior fellow for China and emerging technologies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former deputy senior director for technology and national security at the National Security Council. “That’s not really reshoring if it’s all Chinese tech and Chinese IP.”

China hawks in Washington were alarmed last December when the president blessed a deal allowing American chipmaker Nvidia to export advanced chips to China in exchange for the U.S. government receiving a 25 percent cut of the revenue — something they believe was prompted by Trump’s desire for headline-making business deals. They also have critiqued the broader trade truce Trump and Xi reached in November after meeting in South Korea, arguing it amounted to surrendering U.S. leverage on technology restrictions in exchange for soybean purchases and a one-year pause on Chinese rare earth controls that Beijing could reimpose at will.

Semiconductor access is likely to be one of Xi’s main focal points next week in Beijing, as well.

Auto sales, however, could be even more of a political football. Trump, himself, imposed a 25 percent tariff on Chinese auto imports in 2018. His successor, former President Joe Biden, hiked the duty on Chinese electric vehicles, specifically, to 100 percent. That has effectively kept Chinese cars out of the American market, even as sales of cheap Chinese EVs to Europe and other Western economies has surged.

Trump has not disavowed the remarks he made in January encouraging Chinese automakers to build plants in the U.S., but neither he nor anyone else in the administration has repeated them either.

Peter Harrell, former senior director for international economics in the Biden White House, mused, “If I were the CEO of [leading Chinese EV and battery makers] CATL or BYD, I’d keep making the pitch directly to Trump and hope he’s willing to overrule his advisers.”

Phelim Kine, Megan Messerly and Victoria Guida contributed to this report.