Furor over China Chip Sales

Democratic lawmakers on Monday sharpened their criticism of the Trump administration’s decision to approve at least one license for advanced Nvidia AI chip sales to China, arguing the move weakens U.S. national security.  

Rep. Gregory Meeks, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, said the administration was “undercutting U.S. national security by approving this sale” after Commerce finally provided information they had demanded in December under the Export Control Reform Act.

The pair said the department was nearly two months late in turning over the material and called for bipartisan legislation to block China from obtaining advanced U.S. technology.

Their statement follows the administration’s broader December policy shift allowing exports of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, subject to conditions and a 25% government fee. Trump said at the time the arrangement would preserve U.S. leadership in AI while keeping China reliant on American technology rather than accelerating a shift to domestic alternatives such as Huawei. 

Reports indicate ByteDance is lining up access to Nvidia’s newest Blackwell systems outside China, a move which avoids export controls.

Reuters reported in February that the administration was prepared to approve a ByteDance purchase of H200 chips, but that Nvidia had not accepted draft U.S. conditions, including know-your-customer requirements intended to keep the chips from China’s military. Later that month, a Commerce official told lawmakers that no H200 shipments had yet reached Chinese customers and that deliveries remained stalled over unresolved guardrails. 

The debate has intensified after reports that ByteDance is instead building AI capacity abroad.  The Wall Street Journal reported that the TikTok parent is working with Aolani Cloud to deploy about 500 Nvidia Blackwell systems in Malaysia, totaling roughly 36,000 B200 chips and costing more than $2.5 billion. Nvidia said current export rules permit such cloud systems to be built and operated outside controlled countries.