AsianFin -- U.S. President Donald Trump will personally decide whether to allow Nvidia Corp. to sell advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Monday. The president is consulting with advisers as he weighs tensions between promoting economic growth and protecting national security, Lutnick said.
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"That kind of decision sits right on the desk of Donald Trump," Lutnick said in a Bloomberg interview. "He will decide whether we go forward with that or not." The commerce secretary noted that Trump is hearing from "lots of different advisers" and understands Chinese President Xi Jinping "the best."
Lutnick acknowledged the competing considerations Trump faces in making the decision. "Do you want to sell China some chips and keep them using our tech and tech stack, or do you say to them, 'Look, we're not going to sell you our best chips. We're just going to hold off on that, and we're going to compete in the AI race ourselves,'" he said in the interview.
The commerce secretary said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who has forged a close relationship with Trump and calls him often, has "good reasons" for wanting to sell to China. Lutnick added there are an "enormous number of other people" who agree the matter should be considered. "It's a really interesting question," he said. "He's got all the information. He's got lots and lots of experts talking to him, and he's going to decide which way to go forward."
The comments follow reports on Friday said U.S. officials are in early discussions on whether Nvidia can sell its H200 AI chips to China. Such a move would mark a significant easing of restrictions first imposed in 2022 to prevent Beijing from accessing the most powerful U.S. technologies.
The potential policy shift comes after Nvidia's H20 chip sales in China proved unsuccessful. The company remains shut out of the Chinese market for AI chips after authorities in Beijing told local companies not to buy the less-advanced H20 chips that Trump approved for sale earlier this year.
Nvidia disclosed on its earnings call last Wednesday that H20 sales in China totaled just $50 million during the quarter. CFO Colette Kress said "sizable purchase orders never materialized in the quarter due to geopolitical issues and the increasingly competitive market in China."
The H200 is estimated to be twice as powerful as the H20 chip, currently the most advanced AI semiconductor legally exportable to China. Allowing H200 sales would represent a substantial easing of restrictions designed to limit China's AI capabilities.
Any approval would likely provoke sharp opposition from national-security hawks in Washington, where some lawmakers are backing legislation to prevent such exports. A bipartisan group of senators is drafting legislation that would force the U.S. Commerce Department to deny license applications for all currently restricted chip exports to China, according to Bloomberg.
The White House is currently urging lawmakers to reject bipartisan legislation that would force the Commerce Department to deny license applications for all currently restricted chip exports to China, which would render the H200 discussion moot if enacted. Such a move would contradict earlier administration stances, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's statement five months ago that Trump's team had "no intent" to increase China's access to advanced semiconductors.
Nvidia declined to comment directly but issued a statement saying current regulations don't allow it to offer a competitive data center product in China, "leaving that massive market to our rapidly growing foreign competitors." Nvidia shares climbed as much as 2% to $184.29 on Friday following the initial reports.
