A couple of days ago, Trump told CBS News that China will not be allowed to have the most advanced chips Nvidia makes, but that they can otherwise deal with each other and sort out their own matters. Today, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent corroborated that statement, proposing how "there may be a case down the road" when Beijing can eventually get their hands on Blackwell GPUs.
Speaking to CNBC, Bessent said, "If we think about the Blackwell now, they’re the crown jewel... Given the incredible innovation that goes on at Nvidia, where the Blackwell chips may be two, three, four down their chip stack in terms of efficacy, and at that point they could be sold on." This position aligns with the current landscape in the region where Hopper-based H20 GPUs are still the best Nvidia has to offer — so, when Blackwell becomes a generation or two old, it might trickle down as well.
In his interview, Bessent also highlighted how technological evolution outpaces the rate at which negotiations take place, meaning the silicon is what leads the conversation. If there were a deal to be struck here, it might take longer to agree on the terms than the wait for the next-gen product itself, rendering the discussions pointless in the first place.
Next year, Blackwell (Ultra) will officially be succeeded by Vera Rubin, but it will take time to gain prevalence, which lines up with Bessent's comment on "whether it's 12 or 24 months" before Blackwell is truly behind. At which point, Nvidia will be allowed to sell it to China, who, at least right now, doesn't want anything to do with Nvidia GPUs, with CEO Jensen Huang even claiming that revenue from the region has hit zero.
China is already banned from receiving and high-end Nvidia GPUs, which has led to illicit imports and VRAM modding operations at an unprecedent scale in the region. If any companies wish to sell even neutered versions of their flagship products to China, they have to pay Washington 15% of the cut from the sales — which is what Nvidia would need to do when the cutdown China-only B30A GPU (based on Blackwell, funnily enough) is finally launched.
Despite the bans, Beijing still receives Blackwell chips through grey channels, exporting them from other countries, while China is in the midst of pivoting to homegrown silicon for AI independence. At their meeting last month, President Trump and President Xi Jinping reached a historic trade truce but left out any mentions of Blackwell seemingly even in private conversation, further substantiating the red tape surrounding semiconductor trade policy.
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