In a post on Truth Social on December 8, President Donald Trump said that Nvidia is allowed to sell H200 chips to approved customers in China, provided that the US earns 25% of its revenue, up from 15% in the summer. He stressed that more advanced chip lines such as Blackwell and Rubin are not in the deal.
This decision controversy the policy of restricting chips that has lasted for many years, as Washington seeks to prevent Beijing from accessing computing power (compute) for AI. However, the banes have failed to stop models like China's DeepSeek from rising strongly, even operating at lower costs than US rivals.
Mr. rush doshi ( Georgetown University), a former US National Security Council official, warned that computing power is a key advantage for the US, and giving up part of this advantage increases the risk of the world operating on China's AI.
To comply with the old US regulations, Nvidia had to make a "low-power" version of H20 but was forced to stop selling since April. With the export of the H200 - significantly stronger, China has the opportunity to promote many domestic AI models.
According to Mr. Tim Fist ( Institute for Progress), the new decision "is giving China advanced computational power that they could not have". He predicted that China's AI ecosystem will develop according to the structure: chip Nvidia - Cloud Tencent/Baidu/Alibaba - DeepSeek/Qwen/Kimi model, and these products will compete directly with US AI in the global market.
A new report from the Center for Progress says that thanks to access to H200, the US'scomputing advantage over China in 2026 could be reduced from 10 to just 5 times.
Mr. George Chen (The Asia Group) said that Mr. Trump's decision shows signs of improving Washington - Beijing relations, in the context of the US President planning to visit China in April. Nvidia therefore had a "golden time" to sell the H200, but it did not last long.
China, meanwhile, remains steadfast in its goal of technological autonomy. The new 5-year plan emphasizes prioritizing domestic chips, domestic AI and huge funds to promote self-reliance. Huawei even claimed to be developing a chip that could achieve the worlds largest computing power when chasing clusters.
Chris Mc Guire (US Council on Foreign Relations) called Mr. Trump's move a "great strategic mistake", because it cost the US the biggest advantage in the AI race.
The market fluctuated strongly after the announcement of the US President. Nvidia shares increased by 2% immediately after the trading hour. Chinese AI stocks such as Moore Threads and Cambricon both increased by more than 1-2%, while SMIC decreased by more than 2% in Hong Kong (China).
However, the US continues to investigate the smuggling of chip exports. The US Department of Justice said it has seized more than $50 million of Nvidia H100 and H200 GPUs smuggled to China and restricted areas - evidence that the AI chip market is hotter than ever.
