In the U.S. Congress, concerns are growing over President Donald Trump's decision to allow exports to China of Nvidia's artificial intelligence (AI) chip "H200." The Financial Times (FT) reported on Dec. 12 that "Congress sees it as a decision that could harm the country's strategic interests."
John Moolenaar (Republican-Mich.), Chairperson of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, wrote in a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that it "risks weakening the strategic edge of Trump's first term" to approve sales of cutting-edge chips to Chinese corporations. Moolenaar asked Lutnick to explain the basis for the decision to allow the exports.
FT reported that Nvidia persuaded Trump with the logic that keeping China dependent on U.S.-made advanced chips is the way to protect America's edge, saying "China's Huawei is opening a breakthrough by developing the AI chip '910C,' which matches the performance of Nvidia's chips."
Moolenaar, however, argued that Huawei's chip performance may have been exaggerated. He also said that the fact that the 910C was produced not in mainland China but at Taiwan's TSMC was not sufficiently reflected in the decision. Following a Commerce Department export-control violation decision, Huawei has found it difficult to have the next-generation chip "910D" produced by TSMC, and there were also notes that performance could drop if production is shifted to the mainland.
In the Senate, concerns are mounting across both Democrats and Republicans. There were also reports that Sen. Pete Ricketts, the Republican chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's East Asia and Pacific subcommittee, Democratic ranking member Chris Coons, and other senators recently introduced a bill to ban exports to China of the H200 and Nvidia's most advanced AI chip (Blackwell) for 30 months. FT reported that even within the Republican Party there is disappointment, but there is a mood of refraining from public criticism out of awareness of Trump's backlash.