President Donald Trump approved shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chip to China after telling Xi Jinping in a phone call that the U.S. will take 25% of all sales.
On Truth Social, Trump said the deal applies only to “approved customers” and confirmed that Intel and AMD can also participate. He delivered the announcement on Truth Social after weeks of internal discussions about whether the H200 should be allowed into China’s market.
Trump said, “We will protect National Security, create American Jobs, and keep America’s lead in AI,” while adding that U.S. buyers are already moving ahead with Blackwell and Rubin, which are not included in the deal.
Those chips stay on the American side of the line. The arrangement stands as the first China-facing chip clearance of his second administration, and it comes after months of lobbying from Jensen Huang, who has been trying to reopen access to China’s data center market.
Two months earlier, Trump pitched a different structure that would have required Nvidia and AMD to send the government a percentage of their China earnings.
That one died instantly because no legal structure existed to collect anything. Beijing also refused to buy the chips covered in that plan, so the whole idea never produced a cent. The H200 approval replaces it with a clean demand: ship the chip, pay 25%.
Trump blocks Blackwell deal, leaves Nvidia chasing China again
Before the announcement, Nvidia pushed hard for permission to send its Blackwell line to China. People close to the matter said the White House rejected that idea and steered the discussion toward the H200 instead. Commerce Department officials and Nvidia representatives did not offer public statements after Trump posted his decision.
Jensen, who met Trump last week, told reporters he still has no idea whether China will buy the H200. “We don’t know. We have no clue,” he said while heading into a closed-door meeting with the Senate Banking Committee. He said China refuses to take “degraded” chips and will only purchase hardware that meets its own performance expectations. The committee holds jurisdiction over export controls, and its members have pressed him repeatedly about Nvidia’s talks with the White House.
Last year, the company won permission to sell the H20, which was designed to stay under U.S. export thresholds. China responded by telling domestic buyers to ignore it and choose local processors. That decision locked Nvidia out of China’s data center sales even though the H20 was built specifically to pass Washington’s rules.
White House rejects scaled-down Blackwell plan, Congress drops GAIN AI Act
Trump considered a plan in October to offer China a reduced version of Blackwell, but he walked away from it after meeting Xi in person.
Jamieson Greer, the U.S. Trade Representative, and Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, said they would not support any Blackwell sale to China. Their position held, and the H200 became the only chip under discussion.
Jensen told Bloomberg last month that China could still be a $50 billion market for Nvidia even though the company removed all China data center revenue from its forecast. He said, “We would love the opportunity to be able to reengage the Chinese market.”
Nvidia also collected a win in Congress last week when lawmakers removed the GAIN AI Act from a must-pass defense bill. That proposal would have required Nvidia, AMD, and other chipmakers to give American customers priority before selling any advanced chips overseas. With that gone, Nvidia avoided another barrier on its China business.
The H200, which shipped last year, handles both training and running of AI models. Lawmakers have used the chip as evidence while pushing export limits, arguing that its performance level is too high for China.
Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Banking Committee, said the H200 approval would “turbocharge China’s military and undercut American technological leadership.”
