The CEOs Who Flew to China and Got Nothing
The CEOs Who Flew to China and Got Nothing  
Podcast: The Rip Current
Published On: Sat May 16 2026
Description: Trump brought a dozen of America's most powerful CEOs to Beijing this week — Jensen Huang, Tim Cook, Elon Musk, and others — to meet with Xi Jinping. The optics were big. The results were not. And the whole experience was presumably a nightmare for Trump's emotional-support CEOs.Here's why: these companies aren't trying to expand into China. They're trying to hold onto what they already have — and in most cases, they're losing it anyway. Tim Cook has built Apple's entire supply chain around China. Nvidia has gone from 95% AI chip market share in China to nearly zero. Musk is trying to sell Teslas in a country that views Starlink as a military threat.The world that made Silicon Valley possible — the open-market, borderless-money era that began when China joined the WTO in 2001 — is over. And no amount of diplomatic face time with Xi Jinping, or plane rides with Trump, is going to bring it back.Paid subscribers get early access to this and all my analysis, as well as written reports, including all the source documents.The Rip Current with Jacob Ward is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theripcurrent.com/subscribe