Nvidia can't sell its most advanced AI chip to China, White House says

The Trump administration is not planning to allow Nvidia to sell its most advanced AI chip, known as the Blackwell, to China right now, the White House said on Tuesday.

"As for the most advanced chips, the Blackwell chip, that's not something we're interested in selling to China at this time," White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said during a press conference at the White House.

The remarks echoed comments made by US President Donald Trump on Sunday, when he declared that the most advanced chips made by the world's most valuable company would be reserved for American companies and kept out of China and other countries.

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Questions had swirled about whether Trump would allow shipments of a scaled-down version of the Blackwell chip to China since August, when he suggested he might allow such sales.

Trump had hinted he might discuss the chips with Chinese President Xi Jinping at their summit in South Korea last week, but ultimately said the topic did not come up.

Earlier on Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had suggested that the US eventually could allow high-end Nvidia chips to be sold to Chinese companies as he teased additional meetings between Trump and Xi next year.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks to the media in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in October. Photo: Reuters alt=US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks to the media in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in October. Photo: Reuters>

Bessent called the Blackwell chips the "crown jewel", but said that the pace of technological change could make them less advanced relatively quickly, opening up the possibility of selling the chips to China.

"If we think about the Blackwell now, they're the crown jewel," Bessent told CNBC on Tuesday morning. "What you're describing is actually the pace that the technology is moving, not the pace that the negotiations are moving. So there may be a case down the road."

"I don't know whether it's 12 or 24 months," Bessent said. "Given the incredible innovation that goes on at Nvidia, where the Blackwell chips may be two, three, four down their chip stack in terms of efficacy, and at that point, they could be sold on."

Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang told reporters last week that he hoped to sell chips from the company's Blackwell line-up to customers in China, though he had no current plans to do so.

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In the CNBC interview, Bessent also suggested that Trump and Xi could meet next year at a meeting of the Group of 20 nations to be hosted at the president's golf resort in Doral, Florida, in December 2026, as well as at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group meeting in China in November.

Those meetings would be in addition to two state visits planned between the two nations next year.

"I think we're going to have two state visits next year," Bessent said. "President Trump will be going to Beijing and Xi will be coming to the US. And they may also see each other at the G20 in Doral and then the Apec conference in Shenzhen in November."

"The US-China relationship is on a much more even keel now," he added.

Bloomberg and Reuters

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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