Trump Officials Torpedoed Nvidia’s Push to Export AI Chips to China

The president decided against discussing the matter with Chinese leader Xi Jinping after top aides opposed it.

Shortly before President Trump met Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea, an urgent issue emerged. Trump wanted to discuss a request by Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang to allow sales of a new generation of artificial-intelligence chips to China, current and former administration officials said.

Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang speaks with President Trump often and joined him at a White House event earlier this year.

Greenlighting the export of Nvidia’s Blackwell chips would be a seismic policy shift potentially giving China, the U.S.’s biggest geopolitical competitor, a technological accelerant. Huang—who speaks to Trump often—has lobbied relentlessly to maintain access to the Chinese market.

As they prepared to meet Xi, top officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Trump the sales would threaten national security, saying they would boost China’s AI data-center capabilities and backfire on the U.S., the officials said.

The U.S. was already preparing to make other concessions in the meeting with Xi, in exchange for Beijing allowing exports of rare-earth magnets. Others against the approval, the officials said, included U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who helped lead trade talks.

Faced with nearly unified opposition from his top advisers, Trump decided not to discuss the advanced Nvidia chips during his Oct. 30 meeting with Xi in Busan, South Korea, the officials said.

Trump’s ultimate decision marked a victory for Rubio and other Trump advisers over Huang, leader of the world’s most valuable public company. Exports of Blackwell chips to China are potentially worth tens of billions of dollars in sales and could help Nvidia keep Chinese AI companies hooked on Nvidia’s technology.

Nvidia is awaiting approval from the Trump administration to move ahead with a less powerful version of its Blackwell chip for the Chinese market. Blackwell is the company’s latest generation of AI processors.

“President Trump listens to a variety of insights on policy matters, including from top business leaders,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said. “President Trump’s historic meeting with President Xi proves, however, that the only factor guiding his decision-making is the best interest of the American people.”

Speaking at an Nvidia event in Washington before the Trump-Xi meeting, Huang emphasized the importance of the world’s second-largest economy, which he estimates is home to about half of the world’s AI researchers.

The CEO said he worried about the U.S. permanently ceding the market to China. “I really hope President Trump will help us find a solution,” Huang said. “Right now we’re in an awkward place.”

Trump’s trip to Asia was a crucial moment for the future of Nvidia’s business in China, with the summit with Xi setting the tone for trade policy and the AI race. For months leading up to the Xi meeting, Trump indicated he would consider approving exports of a lower-performance Blackwell chip.

He has reversed course since his Asia trip. In an interview with “60 Minutes” that aired on Sunday, Trump said the U.S. would let China deal with Nvidia but not on the most advanced chips. Talking to reporters on Sunday, Trump said of the Blackwell, “we don’t give that chip to other people,” without specifying if he meant the top-performing version or a less powerful Blackwell designed for China.

The Trump-Xi summit ended without a major deal, though the two sides de-escalated tensions, with the U.S. lowering some tariffs on China and Beijing agreeing to resume some purchases of American soybeans. It gives both sides time to build up self-sufficiency in crucial industries such as semiconductors and rare-earth minerals vulnerable to the other’s sanctions.

For Xi, the summit ended without achieving a key near-term objective: a concession on the U.S. chip ban. While Beijing’s long-term strategy is to achieve self-sufficiency and dominance in high technology, securing access to advanced processors now is critical. It would ​give China valuable time to build up its own domestic capabilities. Not getting such a concession slows the timetable for Beijing’s technological ambitions.

Nvidia needs the administration’s permission to sell its most advanced chips to China under export controls first imposed in 2022. The Trump administration has shown a willingness to allow exports and negotiate over restrictions on China’s tech sector, fueling uncertainty in the industry.

Huang’s efforts to sell the Blackwell in China are expected to continue, especially in the lead-up to Trump’s planned visit to China in April. In Washington last week, Huang said that Trump frequently calls him late at night. He has become one of the president’s favorite executives.

The Blackwell generation of graphics processing units, or GPUs, represents the most powerful AI chips Nvidia has designed. Nvidia has said servers made with the B200 GPU are about three times as powerful as those using the predecessor H100 chip for training AI models and about 15 times as powerful when used for inference processes, or the computations that allow AI models to run.

The specifications for the Blackwell chip Nvidia is developing for China haven’t been released. In August, Trump said he would be willing to approve a Blackwell chip with capabilities reduced by 30% to 50%. Once given the signal to move forward, it would take Nvidia two or three months to engineer such a chip, according to people familiar with the matter.

Even if a Blackwell chip is approved for China, questions remain about its viability. In August, the White House reversed an export ban on an older Nvidia chip if the company shared 15% of China revenue with the U.S. government, an arrangement that some lawyers say represents an unconstitutional export tax.

Shortly afterward, Chinese authorities told companies not to buy it. Nvidia hasn’t sold any of those older H20 chips in China since April, the company has said, missing out on billions of dollars in sales.

Nvidia opponents in Congress and at think tanks have countered the company’s lobbying with their own campaign. Before the Trump-Xi meeting, some circulated a video to administration officials showing Huang saying in a July CNN interview that he didn’t think it mattered who wins the AI race, the people said.

The House Select Committee on China called Huang’s words “dangerously naive” and compared the AI race to the Cold War. “This is like arguing that it would not have mattered if the Soviets beat the U.S. to a nuclear weapon,” the committee wrote on X.

Write to Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com, Amrith Ramkumar at amrith.ramkumar@wsj.com and Robbie Whelan at robbie.whelan@wsj.com