Trump Hosts Xi at White House State Dinner; Musk, Huang, Arnault on Guest List

US President Donald Trump hosted a State Dinner at the White House on Thursday in honour of Chinese President Xi Jinping, bringing together senior officials from both governments alongside a broad cross-section of American business, technology and media figures.

The White House press office released the list of invited guests.

From the US side, attendees included Vice President JD Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Attorney General Todd Blanche, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.

Also on the list were White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton, Budget Director Russell Vought, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Acting Labour Secretary Keith Sonderling and Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler. US Ambassador to China David Perdue was also invited.

Judicial and legislative figures included Supreme Court Justices John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Representatives Richard McCormick and Jason Smith, along with Senator Steven Daines. Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine were listed as well.

The Chinese delegation included Cai Qi, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Vice Premier He Lifeng, National Development and Reform Commission Chairman Zheng Shanjie, Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu and Ambassador to the US Xie Feng. Other Chinese attendees included Finance Minister Lan Fo'an, Central Policy Research Office Director Tang Fangyu, Central Security Bureau Director Zhou Hongxu, and foreign ministry spokespersons and assistants.

Among the business guests were SpaceX's Elon Musk, Nvidia's Jensen Huang, LVMH's Bernard Arnault, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Apple's Tim Cook, Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Google's Sundar Pichai and Sergey Brin, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, OpenAI's Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, and Advanced Micro Devices' Lisa Su. Finance and industry leaders included JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon, BlackRock's Larry Fink, Blackstone's Stephen Schwarzman, Goldman Sachs' David Solomon, Citigroup's Jane Fraser, Boeing's Kelly Ortberg, Lockheed Martin's Jim Taiclet, General Motors' Mary Barra, Pfizer's Albert Bourla, ExxonMobil's Darren Woods and Dell Technologies' Michael Dell.

Media figures such as FOX News' Bret Baier, Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters, and Paramount Skydance's David Ellison were also invited. Members of the Trump family, including Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, Lara Trump and Tiffany Trump, were on the guest list.