Trump’s China visit sparks questions over chip exports, rare earths
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One look at the roster of U.S. execs that cozied up to U.S. President Donald Trump on the 20+ hours flight from Alaska to China on Wednesday and you get a sense of the American delegation’s key focus in Beijing.
Nvidia‘s Jensen Huang, Tesla‘s Elon Musk and Apple‘s Tim Cook were all onboard, as were execs from Meta, Micron, Qualcomm and Coherent. It’s fair to assume tech was a topic that came up on the trip.
The visit got off to a strong start for the group of execs, with Chinese President Xi Jinping saying that China would open up to U.S. businesses. Execs also had their chance to make a pitch directly to the Beijing premier, according to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
The U.S. business leaders had the “opportunity yesterday in a meeting with President Trump and President Xi to come in and talk a little bit about their companies,” Greer said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Friday. He specifically name-checked Nvidia’s Jensen Huang as being there.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump attend a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China May 14, 2026.
Maxim Shemetov | Reuters
No talk of chip exports
But — and this is a big but for the Nvidia chief — Greer added that there was no talk of “chip exports controls at the [bilateral] meeting.”
A licensing deal for Nvidia’s H200 chips would be “politically explosive” and trigger a “fierce backlash from China hawks” in Congress, Heidi Crebo-Rediker, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told CNBC earlier in the week.
Despite potential opposition at home, Reuters reported on Thursday that Washington had cleared sales of Nvidia’s H200 AI chips to several major Chinese technology firms, citing three people familiar with the matter.
There’s also a reluctance to become reliant on Nvidia’s chips on the Chinese side.
“As to whether the Chinese are going to buy [U.S. chips] or not, they’re making their own determinations,” said Greer. “They’re very committed to domestic production, they often see U.S. high tech as a threat to them. If we’re ahead of the game on AI chips…sometimes they feel that can stop their own growth.”
Critical and rare earth minerals
The other key tech area many expected would come up was U.S. access to critical and rare earth minerals — of which China controls the vast majority of the market.
Beijing’s chokehold on critical and rare earth minerals was a key factor in the country’s retaliation against U.S. tariffs in 2025, curbing some exports before a trade truce came into effect.
While the agreement runs until this fall — which Greer described as “solid” — there is uncertainty over whether the truce would be extended. “We’ll see about that,” he said when asked.
“There’s certainly a willingness on both sides, that if this continues to work out well for each country, to continue that and to extend this…
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