President Donald Trump said on Monday 8 December that NVIDIA can sell its H200 AI chips to China, with 25% of the sales going to the US government. The announcement came on Truth Social, and it covers the H200 only: NVIDIA’s newer Blackwell chips stay blocked for Chinese buyers.
What Trump actually said
According to Axios, Trump wrote that the sales would go ahead under “conditions that allow for continued strong National Security”, with the Commerce Department vetting the buyers. He also promised that the same approach would apply to AMD, Intel and other American chipmakers.
That last part is easy to skip past, and I think it is the most important sentence in the post. This is not a one-off favour to one company. It reads like a template: an export that used to be simply allowed or simply banned now becomes a licensed trade in which the US government takes a share of the revenue.
NVIDIA welcomed the decision. The company said it “strikes a thoughtful balance that is great for America”, Al Jazeera reported, and its shares rose more than 2% in after-hours trading.
This has happened before, at a smaller scale
The 25% figure did not come from nowhere. In August 2025, NVIDIA agreed to pay the US government 15% of its revenue from sales of the H20 chip in China, as Al Jazeera noted.
So the pattern over four months looks like this:
- August 2025: the H20 goes to China with 15% of the revenue paid to Washington.
- December 2025: the more capable H200 is cleared, and the government’s share rises to 25%.
- Blackwell remains off the table.
The logic seems to be a sliding scale. The more capable the chip, the higher the share, and the most advanced hardware stays at home. Whether that logic holds up is a political argument, but it is at least consistent.
By the numbers
| Item | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Share of H200 sales going to the US government | 25% | Axios; Al Jazeera; The Register |
| Earlier share of H20 China revenue, agreed August 2025 | 15% | Al Jazeera |
| NVIDIA share move after hours on the news | Up more than 2% | Al Jazeera |
| Chip cleared for sale to China | H200 | Axios; Al Jazeera |
| Chip generation still blocked for China | Blackwell | Axios; Al Jazeera |
| Date of the Truth Social announcement | 8 December 2025 | Axios |
Why it matters
For NVIDIA, the upside is obvious: access to Chinese buyers for the H200, a chip Al Jazeera describes as powerful, rather than only the H20. The market reaction, modest as it was, reflects that. The company gets a sale it could not make last week, even if a quarter of the proceeds goes to the government.
For the export control debate, it is a real shift. Export restrictions on advanced chips were built on the idea that some hardware is too sensitive to sell to rivals at any price. A revenue share changes the question from “should this be sold?” to “on what terms?”. Critics will ask whether national security can have a price tag at all; supporters will say the most advanced hardware, Blackwell, is still protected. Both arguments are now on the table in a way they were not a year ago.
For the Arab world, the contrast with last month is worth noticing. In November, Commerce cleared Blackwell GB300 chips for Saudi Arabia’s HUMAIN and the UAE’s G42, under security and reporting conditions. Now China gets the older H200, with a revenue share attached, and no Blackwell. Put the two decisions side by side and you can see a tiered map of who gets what from Washington, and the Gulf currently sits in a higher tier than China.
What to watch
- How the Commerce Department vets Chinese buyers, and what the “conditions” in Trump’s post turn out to mean in practice.
- Whether AMD and Intel apply under the same approach Trump promised, and at what revenue share.
- How the 25% payment is actually collected and accounted for, since the August H20 arrangement set the precedent.
- Whether the line on Blackwell holds, since the administration has drawn it clearly this time.
Sources
- Axios, report on Trump allowing NVIDIA H200 sales to China, 8 December 2025, https://www.axios.com/2025/12/08/trump-nvidia-200-chips
- Al Jazeera, Trump clears way for sale of powerful Nvidia H200 chips to China, 9 December 2025, https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2025/12/9/trump-clears-way-for-sale-of-powerful-nvidia-h200-chips-to-china
- The Register, report on the reversal of the H200 export ban, 9 December 2025, https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/09/trump_gpu_export_ban_reversal/