Trump blocked Nvidia from exporting its advanced Blackwell AI chips to China just before his October 30 meeting with Xi

￰0￱ stopped Nvidia from moving ahead with a major chip export deal to China in the final hours before President Donald Trump met President Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea, on October 30, according to reporting from the Wall Street ￰1￱ had planned to raise the issue during the summit after Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, pushed for approval to sell the company’s newest Blackwell generation of artificial intelligence chips to Chinese ￰2￱ request was urgent because the chips are critical to training and running advanced AI systems, and the potential sales were worth tens of billions of ￰3￱ days before the meeting, Trump reviewed the request with his top national security and trade ￰4￱ Rubio, the Secretary of State, told Trump that exporting the high-end Blackwell processors would boost China’s AI data center capacity and damage ￰5￱ ￰6￱ Greer, the ￰7￱ representative, and Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary directing trade talks, also opposed the ￰8￱ near-total rejection from those advising him, Trump removed the topic from the Xi summit agenda ￰9￱ pushes for market access while officials warn of national security risk Jensen has spoken with Trump often about Nvidia’s access to China, which is one of Nvidia’s largest markets and home to a large share of the world’s AI research ￰10￱ an Nvidia event in Washington before the Busan summit, Jensen emphasized the ￰11￱ said that about half of the world’s AI researchers work in China and that the ￰12￱ permanently losing market share.

“I really hope President Trump will help us find a solution,” Jensen said. “Right now we’re in an awkward place.” The Blackwell chips are Nvidia’s most advanced generation of ￰13￱ company has said that servers built with the B200 chip can perform training workloads about three times faster than servers using the older H100, and inference tasks about fifteen times ￰14￱ performance differences matter, because they shape how fast companies can build and deploy AI ￰15￱ ￰16￱ imposed export controls on high-end Nvidia chips to China in 2022, saying they were meant to slow Chinese progress in frontier AI ￰17￱ signals conditional openness but rejects top-tier Blackwell For months before the Busan summit, Trump had publicly hinted at a possible approval of a lower-performance version of Blackwell for China, which naturally raised expectations inside Nvidia and among Chinese companies that some export path might ￰18￱ returning from the Asia trip, Trump changed tone in ￰19￱ an interview on “60 Minutes,” he said the ￰20￱ allow China to do business with Nvidia, but not with its most advanced ￰21￱ said of the Blackwell processors, “We don’t give that chip to other people,” without specifying whether he meant only the top-performing version or also the scaled-down version Nvidia had been ￰22￱ specifications for the reduced-performance Blackwell chip have not been ￰23￱ August, Trump said he would consider a version cut by 30% to 50% in ￰24￱ familiar with Nvidia’s internal timeline said the company could produce such a chip within two or three months of receiving ￰25￱ if approved, the reduced version faces ￰26￱ August, the White House reversed an export ban on an older Nvidia chip on the condition that Nvidia share 15% of revenue from China with the ￰27￱ lawyers said such an arrangement functioned like a tax that had not been authorized by ￰28￱ after that proposal surfaced, Chinese authorities privately instructed companies not to buy the ￰29￱ has not sold the H20 chip in China since April, which cost the company billions of dollars in potential ￰30￱ critics target Huang and link AI race to Cold War stakes Opposition to Nvidia’s efforts has grown in Congress and policy ￰31￱ the Busan meeting, critics circulated a video of Jensen’s comments in a July CNN interview where he said he did not think it mattered who won the global AI ￰32￱ House Select Committee on China reacted ￰33￱ described Jensen’s statement as “dangerously naive” and compared the situation to nuclear competition during the Cold ￰34￱ wrote on X, “This is like arguing that it would not have mattered if the Soviets beat the ￰35￱ a nuclear weapon.” The Busan summit itself ended with both governments taking steps to reduce tensions in some ￰36￱ ￰37￱ to lower certain tariffs, and China agreed to resume purchases of ￰38￱ the chip issue remained ￰39￱ Xi, gaining access to advanced processors is essential to China’s goal of building domestic high-technology ￰40￱ receiving relief on the chip restrictions delays China’s ￰41￱ Nvidia, the situation is still ￰42￱ company remains in discussions with the administration about the modified Blackwell ￰43￱ said in Washington last week that Trump calls him late at night, and he expects the conversation to continue ahead of Trump’s planned trip to China in ￰44￱ the top-tier Blackwell chip remains blocked, and the timeline for any alternative is uncertain.

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