Billionaire Elon Musk to join Trump’s APEC trip to China

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, will travel with President Donald Trump to Asia next week, including the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, China, US officials said on Nov. 13.

Trump is set to visit the Philippines before heading to China. Officials said the president does not plan to raise the turmoil at Nvidia Corp. during the trip. Jensen Huang resigned as Nvidia’s chief executive on Nov. 12, days after reports that he could miss the summit.

Musk, who runs Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, has large business interests in China. Tesla operates a major factory in Shanghai, and the country is one of its biggest markets for electric vehicles. He was expected to join Trump’s business delegation as early as Nov. 10, when reports said other top US executives would also make the trip.

A fortune below $1 trillion

Musk was worth $894 billion as of Nov. 12, according to Forbes, down from more than $1 trillion in late October after shares of Tesla and SpaceX fell.

The trip comes as comments Musk made about his taxes on The Builders podcast with biographer Walter Isaacson in October circulate again. He said his wealth is simply his percentage ownership of SpaceX and Tesla and that it will be taxed heavily.

“There’s not some magical way to avoid taxes,” Musk said. “If there were, I would know about it.”

He has said that exercising and selling stock options puts his combined federal and state income tax rate at about 45%, and that a further 40% estate tax would apply when he dies. In a post on X in May, he said he had paid more than $10 billion in taxes in a single year, more than anyone in history.

Critics have questioned that math. Money left to charity is generally exempt from federal estate tax, and Musk has said most of his wealth will go to a foundation, leaving his descendants a small fraction.

Control and charity

Musk said he has no plans to cash out and needs enough voting control to remain in charge of his companies. In July, economist Daron Acemoglu challenged him to pledge his fortune to charity by 2036. Musk replied that he was “actually going to do something along these lines!”

He has also argued that money may matter less as artificial intelligence and robots make goods cheap to produce, suggesting a future currency could be measured in “fundamental physics metrics like wattage and tonnage.”

Musk, 55, co-founded the online payments company that became PayPal before starting SpaceX in 2002 and joining Tesla in 2004. He also controls xAI, which merged with SpaceX earlier this year.