Trump Officials Torpedoed Nvidia’s Push to Export AI Chips to China

Wall Street Journal ^ | November 3, 2025 | Pingpong Wei, etal.

[Whatever Works]

The president decided against discussing the matter with Chinese leader Xi Jinping after top aides opposed the company’s request.

(The rest is behind a pay wall).

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TOPICS: Business/Economy; Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS: ai; china

[Whatever Works]

I hate pay walls. But the intro summed up the info.

[Nextrush]

China is the main adversary not to be coddled IMHO.

[RoosterRedux]

Nothing really new here.

We already knew Trump couldn’t let China get access to the latest Blackwell-class AI chips for national security reasons. The WSJ piece just confirms that his team opposed Nvidia’s request and advised him not to raise it with Xi. Nvidia is still cleared to sell less-advanced, export-compliant chips to China if buyers want them, so this is more of a reaffirmation than a policy shift.

Nvidia already knew where the line was.

They’ve been working with the Commerce Department for over a year to design “China-compliant” chips that stay just below U.S. performance thresholds. Jensen Huang’s request was more of a long-shot appeal to loosen those limits, not a misunderstanding of them.

So in short: Nvidia knew the rules; they just hoped for an exception. The WSJ article mainly documents the administration’s refusal to grant one.

[DFG]

Amazon’s (AMZN) AWS announced it has signed a $38 billion deal with OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) that will give the ChatGPT maker access to AWS’s NVIDIA GPUs

https://finance.yahoo.com/video/openai-amazon-announce-38-billion-142455931.html

[deks]

I scrolled down at the link and found two more paragraphs which can be posted here as an excerpt...
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Shortly before President Trump met Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea, an urgent issue emerged. Trump wanted to discuss a request by Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang to allow sales of a new generation of artificial-intelligence chips to China, current and former administration officials said.

Greenlighting the export of Nvidia’s Blackwell chips would be a seismic policy shift potentially giving China, the U.S.’s biggest geopolitical competitor, a technological accelerant. Huang—who speaks to Trump often—has lobbied relentlessly to maintain access to the Chinese market.

[puppypusher]

I’m sure with the talents the Chicoms seem to have that they’re already planning on stealing or getting those chips illegaly shipped to China by third parties.

Like Nvidia is going to stop earning money?

[libh8er]

The B200’s would go straight into weapons development (drones, missiles..) if it were allowed to be exported.