EBM Newsdesk Analysis
May 13, 2026 — Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, boarded Air Force One in Alaska on Tuesday after President Donald Trump personally telephoned him to reverse an earlier decision to leave the world’s most valuable chipmaker off the delegation accompanying him to Beijing. Trump’s Truth Social post — “Jensen is currently on Air Force One and, unless I ask him to leave, which is highly unlikely, CNBC’s reporting is incorrect” — sent Nvidia shares up 1.5% in overnight trading, lifted the wider semiconductor complex, and triggered an 18-37% surge in Chinese AI stocks led by MiniMax and Zhipu. The 36-hour summit, which encompasses the Iran war, tariffs and Taiwan, is the first visit to China by a sitting US president in nearly a decade.
For European business the message is structural, not transactional. The world’s two largest economies are conducting AI policy in person, with Apple’s Tim Cook, Tesla’s Elon Musk, Qualcomm’s Cristiano Amon, Micron, Coherent and Illumina executives all on the plane. ASML’s lithography monopoly is the only European card in this hand, and it is not being played.
A 24-hour reversal
The original delegation list, leaked Monday, conspicuously excluded Huang. The official explanation cited “awkward conversations” — Trump’s earlier decision to permit Nvidia to sell more advanced chips into China has drawn fierce criticism from Republican China hawks, with House Foreign Affairs Chair Brian Mast publicly mocking the company.
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SubscribeWhat changed in 24 hours was the optics. With media coverage focused on Huang’s absence, Trump moved decisively. The route — Huang flying to Alaska to intercept Air Force One mid-journey — is the kind of detail that lands the story in retail trader feeds and turns it into a Nvidia bull narrative. A House committee has separately advanced legislation that would give lawmakers 30 days to review and potentially block chip sales to countries including China and Iran, but that fight is for after the summit.
What’s actually on the table
Huang has pegged China’s AI chip market as a $50 billion opportunity for Nvidia. Two years ago the country represented $25 billion of revenue, or 32% of 2024 sales. Huang himself recently said Nvidia’s China revenue has “effectively dropped to zero” under current export controls.
The Beijing meeting will not unwind those controls overnight, but the surge in Chinese AI model stocks reflects the market’s read: a softening on chip exports, even at the margin, is now plausible. For European hyperscaler customers and the wider European AI infrastructure build-out, that’s directly material — every chip routed to a Chinese data centre is a chip not routed to Frankfurt, Dublin or Madrid.
Europe’s lockout
There is no European chief executive on Trump’s Air Force One this week. None will be in the room when AI export policy is negotiated. The bloc that produces ASML, SAP and Mistral, and which is mid-way through a €584 billion grid build-out, is a price-taker on the supply side of the trade.
This is the practical content of the structural critique Philippe Aghion made this week — that consensus-based EU coordination produces no seat at any table where actual industrial policy is decided. Brussels can write the AI Act. Beijing and Washington decide who gets the chips.
What to watch
Two things across Thursday and Friday: the formal communiqué wording on export controls, and whether Trump and Xi reach any concrete language on Iran. The chip story will move Nvidia and ASML in opposite directions depending on the outcome. European corporates dependent on US silicon should hedge for both.
The Nvidia trade is on the plane. Europe is watching the in-flight tracker.
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