Trump Greenlights Nvidia H200 Chip Exports to China to Counter Huawei, Maintains Ban on Blackwell

US President Donald Trump has authorised exports of Nvidia’s H200 AI chips to China, judging that the sales pose a lower national-security risk as Huawei already offers AI systems with comparable performance, Bloomberg reported.

The decision removes a major barrier to US chip sales to China while maintaining stricter curbs on the newest American designs.

Officials examined options ranging from a complete export ban to fully open sales before choosing a middle path that allows H200 shipments to vetted Chinese customers but reserves the most advanced Blackwell-generation chips for US users.

According to administration aides, the policy is designed to preserve roughly an 18-month lead for American buyers while keeping Chinese developers tied to US technologies instead of domestic alternatives. A White House spokesman said the approach protects US technological leadership without compromising security.

Technical Comparisons

The decision followed technical assessments that Huawei’s CloudMatrix 384 platform, powered by the company’s Ascend chips, delivers performance comparable to some of Nvidia’s higher-end systems — a factor that reduced the strategic value of keeping H200s off the Chinese market, according to the source.

US officials also judged that Huawei could scale production of its Ascend 910C family far more quickly than previously estimated, potentially producing millions of accelerators in 2026 versus earlier forecasts of only a few hundred thousand this year.

The clearance capped weeks of internal review and came after a private Washington meeting between President Trump and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who has lobbied the administration to relax export controls. In a public post, Mr Trump said shipments would go only to “approved customers” and indicated other chipmakers such as Intel and AMD would also be eligible under the new policy. The Commerce Department and Nvidia did not immediately comment, and a White House spokesperson reiterated the administration’s goal of sustaining American dominance in the tech stack while safeguarding national security.

Uncertainty over China’s Response

It remains uncertain how Chinese customers or regulators will respond. Although Trump said he discussed the decision with President Xi Jinping, Beijing had not publicly signalled support at the time of reporting, and some authorities have reportedly indicated they may limit H200 deployment to select firms to safeguard domestic chipmaking priorities.

Nvidia, meanwhile, has said it does not expect meaningful data-centre revenue from China in the near term, and CEO Jensen Huang has estimated the company forfeited as much as $50 billion in potential sales because of earlier export restrictions.