Musk And Cook Are Flying To China With Trump This Week

The White House is putting Wall Street CEOs and Silicon Valley founders on the same plane to Beijing this week.

Tesla's Elon Musk is on the list.

So are Apple's Tim Cook and Boeing's Kelly Ortberg.

A trade truce, a war, and Taiwan are all on the table.

So is the seating chart, since who gets to walk into the room first sets the tone for the deals.

Who Is Going And Why It Matters

The full list of CEOs reported so far is long.

Musk from Tesla, Cook from Apple, and Ortberg from Boeing are the top names.

Steve Schwarzman of Blackstone, Jane Fraser of Citi, David Solomon of Goldman Sachs, Larry Fink of BlackRock, and Dina Powell McCormick of Meta are also on it.

Each firm has skin in this trip.

Apple makes most of its iPhones in China, and Tesla runs its biggest plant outside the U.S. in Shanghai.

Boeing wants plane orders, while the banks want better access to the China market.

If the summit lands well, those firms get the first read on what changes.

If it goes poorly, at least they were in the room.

Trump last flew to China in 2017, so this is the first U.S. state visit there in nearly a decade.

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What Is On The Table

The two sides are set to sign deals on farm goods and Boeing planes.

They are also working to extend the trade truce they cut in South Korea last October.

That truce rolled back export limits on rare earths.

Rare earths are the metals inside iPhones and F-35 fighter jets.

So the flow stopping again would hit every U.S. tech and defense stock on the same day.

The Iran war is on the list too.

Both sides want the Strait of Hormuz open to trade ships again.

The open question is whether Xi will lean on Tehran, and what he wants from the U.S. in return.

The U.S. Treasury has also hit five Chinese oil refiners with new sanctions for buying Iranian oil.

Beijing has told its firms to ignore the sanctions, so that fight will likely come up in the room.

What To Watch

This is the first U.S. state visit to China since 2017.

Markets will read the joint statement on Friday closely.

The deal-by-deal news through the week will move single stocks.

Tesla, Apple, and Boeing are the big single-name swings to watch.

Chip stocks could also move if the trade truce on rare earths gets a fresh extension.

The market will treat any joint move on the Strait of Hormuz as a clear win for oil prices.

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