Why did Trump allow Nvidia to sell its second-most powerful AI chip to China?
As we approach the end of 2025, there seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel on India-US relations, which started on a strong note amid the promise of Trump 2.0 but gave way to strained ties over claims of US mediating between India and Pakistan, Washington’s sudden fondness for India’s neighbour and its newly minted Field Marshall Asim Munir, and punitive levies on India for buying discounted oil from Russia.Trump, who has given himself the title of the ‘Peace President’, has been the major disruptor in 2025 – whether in geopolitics or geo-economics -- wielding tariffs against countries for allegedly short-changing the US, and as leverage to broker peace.If he’s been labelled unreliable or unpredictable, it’s with good reason. How else can you explain Trump’s decision to sell Nvidia’s H200 chips to China?To be fair, Trump had given the world a warning in October that he would allow Nvidia to export chips to China after his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea.
The new element here is the reveal that the chips to be exported are the H200.The US and China are neck-and-neck in the AI software race. It’s in hardware – the manufacturing of sophisticated chips – that the US has an edge over China.
News reports say the H200 is Nvidia’s second-most powerful AI processor, many times more powerful than the H20 chips that Nvidia was previously permitted to sell to China. These chips are behind the advanced AI systems that increasingly drive autonomous weapons, including drone navigation systems, automatic gun emplacements, and targeting algorithms in modern warfare.Trump’s just-released National Security Strategy identifies China as an economic and military challenge.
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