Washington and Beijing have been engaged in an escalating trade war ever since the Trump administration took over, with tensions over semiconductors in particular reaching an all-time peak. Despite a year-long trade truce being reached last week, it seems President Trump is still adamant about his position to restrict high-end AI chip access to China. Speaking to CBS last night, Trump made it clear that Nvidia's current-gen, flagship Blackwell AI GPUs will not be allowed to be sold to China, and that they're reserved for America first.
In the interview, Trump clarified that "we will let [them] deal with Nvidia" but not in terms of the most advanced chips, which are currently Blackwell (B100, B200) and Blackwell Ultra (B300) GPUs. "The most advanced, we will not let anybody have them other than the United States," he said. Recent rumors suggest that a B30A China-exclusive variant is in the works, featuring half the performance and memory of the regular B300, meeting export control requirements, though nothing is set in stone yet.
Trump met President Xi Jinping last week at a summit in South Korea and reached a historic agreement, pausing the trade war between the two nations for a year. This ease in tensions signaled to the markets that Nvidia's re-entry into China was possible once again, with Jensen Huang even saying, "I think it's really good for America and it’s really good for China that Nvidia could participate in the Chinese market."
Nvidia's Blackwell chips were conspicuously left out of the conversation at this meeting, despite prior indications that they would be a talking point. This ever-important convergence of premiers from different nations and billionaire CEOs resulted in Trump saying that the U.S. serves as "sort of the arbitrator or the referee" between China and Nvidia on the latter's "super duper" Blackwell GPUs.
However, the President has now completely shut the door on Nvidia's flagship product entering Beijing, while China itself has banned local firms from purchasing Nvidia GPUs, focusing on homegrown chip development. Nvidia currently sells the outdated, Hopper-based H20 GPU in the region, which performs poorly considering how gaming GPUs with modded VRAMs are thriving in underground markets.
This latest development is symbolic of the tit-for-tat nature of a trade war between two powerhouses, both unwilling to step down despite a temporary truce in place. Current policy indicates that chipmakers like AMD and Nvidia need to share 15% of their revenue from sales to China, which would extend to cover the rumored Blackwell-based, cut-down B30A GPU. Only time will tell if that picks up steam and helps the company's sales increase in the region once again.
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