Nvidia will be permitted to continue selling H20 graphics processing units in China following a visit to Mar-a-Lago by CEO Jensen Huang, according to NPR. Huang attended a dinner last Friday at the resort that was priced at $1 million per head, though it is unclear whether he spoke with President Trump.
The White House has not commented on the pivot but was reportedly planning on implementing restrictions banning H20 sales in China imminently, potentially within days. NPR reports that Huang offered to invest more into U.S. AI data centers at a time when Microsoft is pulling back and shifting tariffs threaten to raise the cost of construction.
The United States already restricts exports of Nvidia’s cutting-edge H100 chips to China, over concerns that the country will develop AI for use in warfare and mass surveillance. Not an unfounded concern, as the country has often brutally repressed its citizenry, especially the Uyghur ethnic minority. But CEOs find God when it comes to making money. China is a major market for Nvidia, so the company convinced the government to allow it to sell chips with somewhat neutered performance, including the H20.
To put the importance of China for Nvidia into context, it was recently reported by The Information that Chinese firms purchased $16 billion worth of H20 chips in the first three months of 2025, anticipating an impending ban. In that sense, ponying up $1 million for $16 billion in sales is a pretty good return on investment.
Similar to Apple and its CEO Tim Cook, Huang has been careful to walk a fine line on the subject of China. Early this year he made a quiet visit to the country, where he reinforced the country’s role in Nvidia’s growth. Huang noted that more than 1.5 million developers in China use CUDA, its software toolkit for training AI on its chipsets. Nvidia has collaborated with more than 3,000 startups in the country, he added. “Over the past two decades, we have significantly contributed to the modernization of one of the world’s most dynamic markets, and we take immense pride in our role within this ecosystem.”
One could argue that export restrictions on China have been something of a double-edged sword. They may slow the country’s advancements in weaponry or surveillance, but the technology industry there has become adept at making its models more efficient, doing more with less. Nothing has exemplified that more than DeepSeek R1, a lightweight AI model that was reportedly built in just two months and with less than $6 million. The company used compliant H800 chips to train the model.
The H20 chip is particularly well suited for inference tasks, like the reasoning technique that was initiated by OpenAI’s o1 and DeepSeek’s R1 models.
Huawei is another company that found the silver lining in export restrictions. The smartphone maker was hobbled after President Trump, during his first administration, restricted the company’s access to Western-made processors and software. Last year it unveiled its first smartphone with its own homegrown chip and operating system, a feat many critics did not believe it would be able to accomplish so quickly. No, it no longer needs to worry about playing nice with the Trump administration.
Kissing the ring may have worked for Nvidia’s CEO, but many other technology leaders have made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago, and it is not clear they will get much out of it. President Trump’s administration remains hawkish on big tech over the belief they have censored conservative viewpoints. Meta continues to face a fast-approaching FTC antitrust trial, despite large donations and repeated trips by Mark Zuckerberg to curry Trump’s favor.
Either way, the latest move is another example of how easy it can be to manipulate the Trump administration. If China is such a clear-cut bad actor on the global stage trying to become the new world power, why is President Trump allowing them to continue buying AI chips? At least maybe China buying chips while slapping tariffs on their goods imported to America could reduce the trade deficit.
