Beijing, China - Republican Senator Steve Daines, a hardcore supporter of President Donald Trump, met Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Beijing for meetings on trade and fentanyl.

Daines met with both Premier Li Qiang and Vice Premier He Lifeng on Sunday, following an annual business summit in Beijing attended by major international firms.

Pfizer's CEO Albert Bourla, Cargill CEO Brian Sikes, Boeing's Global Senior Vice President Brendan Nelson, as well as senior executives from a range of other companies joined Daines in his meeting with officials.

"Collectively, these seven companies have over 275 years of experience of doing business in China," Daines said in a transcript cited by Reuters as he championed US businesses in China.

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Daines lived in Guangzhou and Hong Kong in the 1990s while working in the business world and is now a high-level Trump supporter and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

His trip was the first time a US politician had visited China since Trump's inauguration. It was centered around negotiating US-China trade disputes, Trump's trade war, and concerns around the export of fentanyl precursors.

"Senator Daines appreciated Premier Li for meeting with the CEOs of seven American companies who shared their decades-long commitment to doing business in China, as well as their other challenges," read a statement posted to Daines' X account.

"The Senator also emphasized President Trump's call for decisive action from China to stop the flow of fentanyl precursors and to end their devastating impact on the American people."

A press release put out by China's foreign ministry said Li Qiang told Daines that "economic and trade cooperation is an important foundation of China-US relations."

"The more difficulties China-U.S. relations face, the more important it is to safeguard and develop China-U.S. economic and trade cooperation, in a bid to continue injecting stability into bilateral relations," the press release read.

Li Qiang reportedly "called on the two sides to solve problems such as trade imbalance by making the pie of cooperation bigger and creating more incremental benefits."

"Trade wars produce no winners. No country can achieve development and prosperity through imposing tariffs, but only through openness and cooperation."