By Reed Albergotti
Publication Date: 2026-05-13 01:14:00
The News
President Donald Trump restored Nvidia’s Jensen Huang to the list of CEOs accompanying him to China at the 11th hour Tuesday, in spite of worries that the chipmaker’s presence could be a political liability.
The president “called Jensen this morning after seeing reports that he wasn’t joining trip. Told him he wanted him to come. Jensen flew to Alaska to meet AF1,” a person familiar with the surprising sequence of events said Tuesday.
Huang, who’s still in Trump’s inner circle to the extent any CEOs can remain there, had previously discussed with the president how the presence in Beijing of the world’s largest chipmaker could invite unwanted scrutiny of the trip, people familiar with the conversations said. Sitting out the visit would have prevented the “awkward conversations” that surround the highly contested sale of Nvidia chips to China, one of the people said.
But after a spate of public reports — including in Semafor — that Huang would not travel with the president, the Nvidia CEO boarded Air Force One Tuesday night, where he was photographed on the tarmac by journalists on the trip.
After Trump’s decision to let Nvidia sell China more advanced semiconductors drew pointed criticism from the Republican Party’s China hawks, bringing Huang along on Trump’s Beijing visit would have risked fueling intraparty tension that could have distracted from efforts to reset the US relationship with China.
The White House subsequently decided to…
