NVIDIA is now allowed to sell its second-best H200 processors to China, rather than just the sanction-approved H20 model that China had previously declined to buy, President Trump wrote on Truth Social. The United States will collect a 25 percent tariff on those sales, the Commerce Department confirmed yesterday.
Trump said that he informed China’s President Xi Jinping of the decision and that he “responded positively.” The Commerce Department is finalizing details and the administration will take the same approach with AMD, Intel and other US companies. He added that the administration would “protect National Security,” so the latest Blackwell and upcoming Rubin chips are not part of the deal. The 25 percent tariff would be higher than the 15 percent the White House suggested in August.
Though the administration won’t allow NVIDIA to send its latest high-end chips, it was reportedly concerned that the company would lose business to Huawei if it was completely shut out of China’s market, according to Reuters. No details about the number of H200 chips or which companies would be eligible to buy them were released. “Offering H200 to approved commercial customers, vetted by the Department of Commerce, strikes a thoughtful balance that is great for America,” NVIDIA said in a statement.
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The decision is not without controversy, though. Several Democratic US senators called it a “colossal economic and national security failure” that will aid China’s industry and military. Republican representative John Mollenaar put it in even starker terms. “NVIDIA should be under no illusions — China will rip off its technology, mass-produce it themselves and seek to end NVIDIA as a competitor,” he said.
Despite the current restriction on Blackwell B200 processors, $1 billion worth of those and other high-end NVIDIA chips have made their way to China via black market sales, according to previous reports. That model, along with the H100 and H200, is far more capable than the H20 chip, which was designed to comply with export restrictions for sale to China. NVIDIA has said that the B200 chip is almost ten times faster than the H200 for some jobs, and the H200 is six times faster than the H20.
Washington’s approval doesn’t mean that China will purchase NVIDIA’s chips, as Beijing has previously told companies not to use US technology. Huawei is currently the most advanced company in that regard and recently unveiled a three-year plan to catch up with NVIDIA and AMD. However, AI chip experts like Richard Windsor have said NVIDIA’s tech is still far ahead of anything that Huawei or other Chinese companies can currently produce.
