The White House delegation includes leaders from tech, finance and manufacturing as Washington seeks closer economic talks with Beijing.

As it turns out, Musk’s pause in political spending lasted two months. And he’s become the third largest political donor in the 2026 midterm cycle, behind Andreessen Horowitz and George Soros.

The Tesla CEO is among more than a dozen business leaders that the president said he asked to tag along on his high-stakes Beijing summit.

United States President Donald Trump is set to visit Beijing on Thursday for a historic meeting between the world leaders, the first on Chinese soil in nearly a decade. The 14 to 15 May meeting had originally been scheduled for March. However, US-Israeli strikes on Iran, which sparked the war in the Middle East, caused a delay in proceedings.