One of the most fun things about being a journalist is that you get paid to be curious. And, in the case of Fortune’s journalists, curiosity can open doors to some rarefied places. It’s our job to get inside the rooms where business happens. We meet the smartest and most powerful people—the ones who are building the future we will all live in—and digest what we learn for readers.
In mid-May, I sat in the room that’s the center of American economic power, the Oval Office, and spoke with President Donald Trump, hours before he boarded a plane to China with an entourage of Fortune 500 CEOs for a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The president and I talked business for an hour, discussing his feelings about the Supreme Court ruling striking down his tariffs (“It really pisses me off”); the prospect of new Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh cutting interest rates at a time of high inflation (“You can’t really look at the figures until the war is over”); dealmaking with Iran; the story behind the government’s unprecedented stake in Intel; and more.
It’s our job as journalists to get inside the rooms where the smartest and most powerful people are building the future. In this issue, one of those rooms is the Oval Office.
One thing is obvious: President Trump is operating like no other U.S. president in history, especially when it comes to business and the economy. He is shaking up the playbook one deal at a time, whether it’s securing foreign investment commitments or personally making pitches to other countries to buy Boeing planes. (Last fall, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg dubbed the president “Salesman of the Year.”)
The president’s detractors, Trump admits, call what he’s doing “un-American”—in part because he blurs the line between government and business in ways that worry free-market capitalists. He, of course, strongly disagrees. Trump makes his case in our exclusive interview.
As for the entourage Trump took to China, you’ll find a few stories about them on the following pages as part of our package devoted to the 29th annual Most Powerful Women in Business list. Meta’s new president and vice chairman, Dina Powell McCormick, a heavy-hitting ambassador for the company’s AI push, joined President Trump’s trip in place of Mark Zuckerberg. Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser, who earned the top spot on our list this year, traveled to Beijing as well. Together this year’s MPWs run companies with $7.3 trillion in annual revenue.
Last but hardly least, this issue features our annual Fortune 500 ranking, where big news is breaking: For the first time in 13 years, our ranking of America’s largest corporations has a new No. 1. Amazon has taken the crown from Walmart, reaching $717 billion in revenue thanks in large part to its cloud-services cash cow, Amazon Web Services. Amazon is only the fourth company to earn the top ranking in the list’s 72-year history (before Walmart, the top dogs were General Motors and Exxon Mobil). That fact stands as a reminder that in business, not every big change happens overnight. Enjoy reading!
This article appears in the June/July 2026 issue of Fortune with the headline “Power on our pages.”