Lutnick: Trump Mulling Exports of Nvidia H200 Chips to China
The Trump administration is weighing the pros and cons of lifting export restrictions on shipments of Nvidia’s H200 AI chips to China, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Nov. 24.
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In an appearance on Bloomberg Television, Lutnick suggested that the administration hasn’t yet decided whether to lift those controls and that President Donald Trump will make the final determination. “That kind of decision sits right on the desk of Donald Trump,” Lutnick said.
He added that Nvidia and CEO Jensen Huang are lobbying the U.S. to allow those exports, and Huang has “good reasons for it.” Plus, there are “an enormous number of other people who think that that's something that should be deeply considered.”
“The benefit that we have is we have Donald Trump in the Oval Office. He is going to weigh those decisions. He understands [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping] the best. He will decide whether we go forward with that or not. That's on his desk with lots of different advisers,” he said. “He'll decide whether we sell those chips or not, and then we will go execute it however he decides to go forward.”
The Trump administration earlier this year announced an arrangement with Nvidia to approve exports of the company’s H20 chips to China in exchange for the firm paying the U.S. a portion of the profits it earns from those sales (see 2508220003). But the H200 is more powerful, and DOJ last week arrested four people involved in a scheme that involved, in part, illegal exports of H200 chips to China (see 2511210011).
Lutnick was asked whether he believes preventing American firms from selling advanced chips to China and causing them to lose the Chinese market presents a greater risk to U.S. national security than allowing China free access to those U.S. high-powered chips.
“That's the question exactly [that’s] in front of the president, which is, do you want to sell China some chips and keep them using our tech and our 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.
Trump has “all the information. He's got lots and lots of experts talking to him, and he's going to decide which way he wants to go forward.”
Commerce last week announced plans to approve exports of Nvidia's more advanced Blackwell chip to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia (see 2511190068).