Trump Won't Raise Nvidia Case or Chip Controls With Xi in Shenzhen, Officials Say

"The situation with Nvidia should not really have any bearing on the trip," one official said. On chips, officials said "we do not negotiate American export controls" and did not expect the subject to come up. The economic focus of the talks with Xi would be implementing the trade agreement between the two countries, they said, and one official said Washington would probably not brief Beijing on ongoing national security investigations.

Keeping chips off the agenda is a deliberate choice at a moment when the scandal around former Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang has made export controls the most contested technology question in Washington. Huang resigned this week after reports of an affair with Alice Huang, a former executive of Megaspeed, the Singapore-based cloud computing company being examined over whether it helped route billions of dollars of restricted Nvidia chips to China. US officials suspect Alice Huang of spying for China, which Beijing denies; the two are not related. The affair has raised questions about whether the Commerce Department, run by Trump's friend Howard Lutnick, has done enough to keep advanced chips out of China, and lawmakers from both parties are pressing for tighter limits.

The officials said Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, will accompany Trump to Shenzhen for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. One declined to explain why Musk was going but said he has major business interests in US-China relations, is "a big part of our national security" and could advise the president. Musk will not take part in the leaders' meetings, according to AFP.

The White House also said Trump, Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold the first three-way meeting of the leaders of the three countries on Thursday, on the sidelines of the summit. White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said that "among other topics, he will discuss the reduction of nuclear weapons in the world," and a senior official said the president "does intend to talk about Iran." Russia's war in Ukraine is not expected to be discussed, with officials pointing to a separate negotiating track that China is "not really a part of."

Trump and Xi will also hold a bilateral working lunch and meeting on Thursday, their fourth encounter since Trump returned to office in 2025. No one-on-one meeting with Putin is planned.

The question of what Trump knew about the Nvidia case has followed him into the trip. CNN reported this week, citing a source, that he was briefed on spy concerns related to Huang during his visit to China in May, despite his denial that he had been told.

Trump leaves Washington on Monday for the Philippines, where he will attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit on Tuesday, before travelling on to Shenzhen. In Washington, Lutnick is due before the Senate Banking Committee on December 10 to answer questions about Nvidia's chip sales to China.