Overview

• The administration halted restrictions on Nvidia’s China-specific H20 chips and assured the company of prompt export licenses to support high-level US–China trade talks.
• Nvidia placed fresh orders for 300,000 H20 GPUs from TSMC to top up its existing 600,000–700,000 unit inventory while awaiting license approvals.
• Twenty national security experts warned in a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that the reversal is a “strategic misstep” endangering US AI inference capabilities and military edge.
• Democratic lawmakers including Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi and Gregory Meeks and Senators Schumer, Warner, Reed, Coons and Warren argued that using export controls as bargaining chips undermines US security and export regime credibility.
• Policymakers caution that easing controls could accelerate China’s military AI development and weaken the credibility of multilateral export control regimes.