President Trump greenlights Nvidia AI chip shipments to China

The Trump administration officially greenlit Nvidia exports on Tuesday, allowing the tech giant to ship its artificial intelligence chips to China and other countries.

In a new rule to be published on January 15, the Commerce Department is reducing US export restrictions on China’s Nvidia H200 chip, a move President Donald Trump announced last month.

“We applaud President Trump’s decision to allow the US chip industry to compete to support high-paying jobs and manufacturing in America,” an Nvidia spokesperson told FOX Business in a statement. “Offering the H200 to authorized commercial customers, inspected by the Department of Commerce, provides a good perceived balance for America.”

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The tech company continued, “Critics of the Administration are unwittingly promoting the interests of foreign competitors in the ranks of US companies—America should always demand that its industry compete with a vetted and approved commercial enterprise, supporting real jobs for real Americans.”

The legislation states that the Department of Commerce’s Office of Commerce and Defense will revise its license review policy for certain semiconductor exports to China from the perspective of objections to a case-by-case review, partially rolling back the Biden-era controls on high-end chip exports.

Trump announced last month that he would allow the sale of the chips to pay a 25% tax on the US government, saying the deal would be viewed primarily to protect national security.

“I have informed President Xi, of China, that the United States will allow Nvidia to ship its H200 products to authorized customers in China, and in other countries, under conditions that allow continued strong national security,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social in December.

Nvidia’s H200 chips are high-performance processors that help run AI applications, including chatbots, machine learning and data center operations.

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Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia Corp, and US President Donald Trump. (Graeme Sloan/Bonnie Cash/UPI/Bloomberg/Getty Images)

The regulations state that the chips will be tested by a third party in the United States to verify their AI capabilities and functions, and China will not be allowed to acquire more than 50% of the total chips sold in the US.

Nvidia must ensure that there is an adequate supply of chips in the US, and China must also demonstrate adequate security procedures.

China will be banned from using chips for military purposes.

Reuters reported last month that Chinese technology companies had placed orders for more than two million H200 chips, each worth about $27,000, far exceeding Nvidia’s current supply of about 700,000 chips.

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NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang presents the “Industrial AI Cloud” project during a press conference in Berlin, Germany, November 4, 2025. (REUTERS/Lisi Niesner/Reuters)

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said during last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that the company is ramping up chip production because of strong global demand, including in China, which is driving up prices for renting chips in cloud-computing data centers.

Trump has criticized regulations from the Biden administration that limit the export of advanced AI chips and semiconductors to China due to national security concerns.

Those restrictions were largely aimed at Nvidia’s previous generation of high-end chips, as part of an effort to prevent China from gaining a technological edge.

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Last month, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., accused Trump of “selling out America” ​​after announcing that the US plans to allow Nvidia to export its chips to China and other countries.

FOX Business’ Bonny Chu and Reuters contributed to this report.