Trump administration, Nvidia H20 Lifting of export restrictions to China
Nvidia, Promised Investment Within The United States And Excluded From Chinese Export Restrictions (Source: Reuters)
It is reported that the U.S. administration led by President Donald Trump has withdrawn its policy of restricting exports to China of Nvidia's artificial intelligence chip H20. U.S. public broadcaster NPR reported on the 9th (local time), citing multiple sources, that this decision was made after a recent dinner between President Trump and Jensen Huang, Nvidia's Chief Executive Officer (CEO).
H20 is a high-performance AI chip developed by Nvidia for export to China and is the highest specification product that can avoid U.S. government export controls. Although it has lower performance than Nvidia's latest chip, Blackwell, it is equipped with high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and is evaluated to have improved some performance. This chip was recently rumored to have been used in products of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, drawing industry attention.
The U.S. semiconductor export restrictions to China, which have continued since the era of former President Joe Biden, have been steadily strengthening recently. The Trump administration had also been preparing additional regulations on H20 for several months and planned to implement them this week. However, after Jensen Huang, CEO, attended a dinner at President Trump's Florida residence Mar-a-Lago last week and promised investment in U.S. AI data centers, H20 was removed from the regulation list. NPR reported that this investment promise had a direct impact on the administration's change of stance. However, specific investment amounts or timelines have not been disclosed.
Nvidia is evaluated to be able to maintain its foothold in the Chinese market with this decision. Previously, IT specialized media The Information reported that major Chinese tech companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance had ordered more than 16 billion dollars (approximately 23 trillion 500 billion won) of H20 chips in the first quarter of this year. At that time, the industry analyzed that Chinese companies were securing inventory as there were speculations that U.S. government regulations would expand to H20.
It is still unclear whether this export restriction withdrawal is a strategic decision to expand semiconductor investment in the U.S. or merely a temporary deferment measure. However, this decision surrounding H20 shows that U.S. semiconductor export policy considers industrial attraction and diplomatic strategy beyond simple regulations.