President Trump’s visit to China raises questions about chip exports and rare earths

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The list of U.S. officials who accompanied President Donald Trump on Wednesday’s more than 20-hour flight from Alaska to China shows the U.S. delegation’s focus on Beijing.

NvidiaMr. Jensen Huang, teslaElon Musk and appleTim Cook of the company was all in attendance, as were executives. meta, micron, Qualcomm and reasonable. It would be reasonable to assume that technology was a hot topic during the trip.

The trip got off to a good start for the executives, with Chinese President Xi Jinping saying his country would open its doors to American companies. U.S. Trade Representative Jamison Greer said executives also had the opportunity to pitch directly to Beijing.

Greer said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Friday that U.S. business leaders “had a chance to talk a little bit about their companies yesterday in a meeting with President Trump and President Xi.” He specifically identified Nvidia’s Jensen Huang as being there.

But while this is a big deal for Nvidia’s CEO, Greer added, “There was no talk about chip export controls at the[bilateral]meeting.”

A license deal for Nvidia’s H200 chip is “politically explosive” and will provoke “violent backlash from China hawks” in Congress, Heidi Klebo Rediker, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told CNBC earlier in the week.

Despite possible domestic opposition, Reuters reported Thursday that the U.S. government has cleared the sale of Nvidia’s H200 AI chip to several major Chinese technology companies, citing three people familiar with the matter.

China is also reluctant to rely on Nvidia’s chips.

“China makes its own decisions about whether to buy (U.S. semiconductors) or not,” Greer said. “They’re very keen on domestic production and often see American high-tech as a threat to them. They sometimes feel that if we’re ahead of them with AI chips… it could stop their growth.”

Another key technology area that many expected to emerge is U.S. access to critical rare earth minerals, where China controls much of the market.

Beijing’s clampdown on critical rare earth minerals was a key factor in China’s retaliation against U.S. tariffs in 2025, curbing some exports before the trade ceasefire took effect.

Although the agreement lasts until this fall (which Guria described as “robust”), there is uncertainty as to whether the ceasefire will be extended. When I asked him, he said, “We’ll see about that.”

“If this continues to work well for countries, there is certainly an appetite on both sides to continue that and expand this capacity to ensure access to rare earths,” Greer said. He added that the United States has seen rare earths from China “reach better levels, but sometimes it’s been slow.”

Klevo Rediker said an extension of the agreement would be the “best outcome” for the United States’ access to critical rare earth minerals. “The United States and its allies cannot out-extract, process, and outspend China fast enough to rebuild resilience in the short term.”

Negotiations on this aspect, perhaps one of the most sensitive topics between the two countries, will continue into the summer. It would not be surprising if this issue comes up again when President Xi heads to the United States to return home in September.

Defense technology startup Anduril announced Wednesday it has raised $5 billion in a funding round led by Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, doubling its valuation to $61 billion.

Waymo is recalling about 3,800 robotaxis in the U.S. to fix a software issue that allowed them to “drive onto flooded roads,” according to a letter posted on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website.

Google’s threat intelligence group said in a report on Monday that it had thwarted hackers’ efforts to use AI models to “plan a large-scale vulnerability exploitation operation.”

OpenAI announced Monday that it will grant the European Union access to its new cyber model, but Anthropic is still holding off on releasing Mythos to the EU.

Cerebras Systems made a big debut on Wall Street, with the chip company closing its first day of trading with a market cap of just under $100 billion.

State newspaper Xinhua News Agency said President Xi told President Donald Trump and fellow US CEOs on Thursday that the door to doing business in China would be “opened wider.”

It was music to the ears of the executives in attendance. But only time will tell what that means in practice for American companies looking to expand domestically.