Just before his scheduled meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, former US President Donald Trump was reportedly prepared to consider easing export restrictions on Nvidia's latest AI chips - but senior advisers stepped in to stop him. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had lobbied intensely for access to the Chinese market.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, Trump planned to raise Huang's request to allow sales of the new Blackwell AI chips to China during his meeting with Xi. Such approval could have significantly accelerated China's technological development. The report says Huang, who frequently speaks with Trump, personally urged the president to relax export limits.
However, senior officials - including Secretary of State Marco Rubio - warned that selling the chips could pose a national security risk. They argued that the technology would strengthen China's AI data centers and could ultimately be used against the United States. Faced with near-unanimous opposition from his top advisers, Trump chose not to bring up the subject during his October 30 meeting with Xi.
Nvidia's close ties to the president
The decision marks a setback for Huang, whose company stood to gain tens of billions of dollars from potential exports to China. Huang has reportedly said that Trump often calls him late at night and considers him one of his favored business leaders. According to the report, Huang intends to continue pushing for a resolution. Critics in Congress have already called his stance "dangerously naive," pointing to a past interview in which he downplayed the importance of whether the US or China wins the global AI race.
The future of a scaled-down Blackwell version for China also remains uncertain. While Trump initially appeared open to allowing a limited model, he sounded more cautious after returning from his Asia trip, the report notes. A previous case adds to the uncertainty: the export ban on Nvidia's older H20 chip was eventually lifted, but only on the condition that the US government would receive a share of the revenue. Soon after, Chinese regulators instructed domestic companies not to buy the chip - a move that Nvidia said cost it billions in lost revenue.
Meanwhile, China is trying to offset the impact of US sanctions. As reported by the Financial Times, Beijing has begun subsidizing up to half the energy costs for major data centers to counter the higher expenses caused by using less efficient domestic AI chips after the ban on Nvidia processors.
