Trump's two-day Beijing summit with Xi Jinping in May 2026 came with an entourage whose combined net worth approached $1 trillion. The traveling delegation included Eric Trump (executive vice president of the Trump Organization) and Lara Trump, plus CEOs Elon Musk (Tesla/SpaceX), Tim Cook (Apple), Jensen Huang (Nvidia), Larry Fink (BlackRock), Jane Fraser (Citi), Stephen Schwarzman (Blackstone), Kelly Ortberg (Boeing), and executives from Meta, Visa, Mastercard, Goldman Sachs, Qualcomm, and Micron. The Wall Street Journal reported that each company was required to develop 'tangible asks' for Beijing. Musk's reported asks included $2.9 billion in solar-panel equipment and regulatory clearance for Tesla self-driving technology in China.
Also on the plane: filmmaker Brett Ratner, in China to scout locations and prepare production on 'Rush Hour 4.' Paramount confirmed Trump personally requested the franchise revival. Ratner previously directed the documentary 'Melania.' The Washington Post, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, and TheWrap all covered Ratner's inclusion in the official state-visit manifest.
The Eric Trump piece of the entourage is the corruption hinge. Eric Trump runs the Trump Organization. The White House said he attended 'in a personal capacity,' the same framing Trump's first-term administration aggressively criticized when applied to Hunter Biden. During Trump's first term, Chinese entities paid $5.5 million at Trump family vacation properties, more than any other country's government bookings combined. ProPublica has separately documented 3,200 undisclosed financial conflicts across the administration. Bringing the Trump Organization's chief operating executive on a sovereign-credentialed state visit during which CEOs are openly trading deals for regulatory concessions is the system functioning exactly as designed.