President Trump is going to permit NVIDIA to sell advanced AI chips to China that are more powerful than anything China can currently produce. The U.S. government will get a kickback from NVIDIA.
We are now “on track to reduce our compute advantage over China from 33 to 1 to 1.2 to one.”
According to people on the thread below, these H200 chips *will* be used to hack Americans personal information and blackmail American voters and businesses on a large scale. It will raise prices of H200s in the West.
The US has reportedly decided to approve exports of NVIDIA’s H200 chip to China.
This gives Chinese AI labs chips that outperform anything China can make until ~2028.
How big a deal this is depends on how many we export.
Thread with key charts from our new report… pic.twitter.com/bc2poxLmxx
— Tim Fist (@fiiiiiist) December 8, 2025
The H200 belongs to the previous “Hopper” generation of NVIDIA AI chips. These are still widely used for frontier AI in the US and will likely remain so for 1 to 2 years.
18 of the 20 most powerful publicly documented GPU clusters primarily use Hopper chips. pic.twitter.com/mDYp0gTBGx
— Tim Fist (@fiiiiiist) December 8, 2025
How big a deal this is depends on how many we export.
We model 9 different scenarios. US compute advantage varies from ~50x to 1.2x, depending on export quantity, elasticity, and the extent to which AI developers utilize Blackwell’s FP4 features. pic.twitter.com/ZPcRTdTmwH
— Tim Fist (@fiiiiiist) December 8, 2025
Fist Adds:
Why is compute advantage good? A bigger advantage means greater US capacity to train more/more powerful models, support more and better AI and cloud companies, and deploy more AI at home and abroad.
The argument for exporting H200s is to slow China’s AI chip industry. But the CCP recognizes its strategic vulnerability. It’s subsidizing industry + creating demand for Huawei chips via procurement mandates and restrictions. US export policy is unlikely to change this.
Instead, H200 exports will counterfactually boost China’s ability to both develop frontier AI models and deploy them widely, competing with US AI and cloud companies abroad. The new Chinese stack will be NVIDIA chips, Tencent/Baidu/Alibaba cloud, and DeepSeek/Qwen/Kimi models.
President Trump’s take:
I have informed President Xi, of China, that the United States will allow NVIDIA to ship its H200 products to approved customers in China, and other Countries, under conditions that allow for continued strong National Security. President Xi responded positively! $25% will be paid to the United States of America. This policy will support American Jobs, strengthen U.S. Manufacturing, and benefit American Taxpayers. The Biden Administration forced our Great Companies to spend BILLIONS OF DOLLARS building “degraded” products that nobody wanted, a terrible idea that slowed Innovation, and hurt the American Worker. That Era is OVER!
We will protect National Security, create American Jobs, and keep America’s lead in AI. NVIDIA’s U.S. Customers are already moving forward with their incredible, highly advanced Blackwell chips, and soon, Rubin, neither of which are part of this deal. My Administration will always put America FIRST. The Department of Commerce is finalizing the details, and the same approach will apply to AMD, Intel, and other GREAT American Companies. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Someone who has Trump’s ear might be feeding him bad information.
