As President Trump flew to South Korea on Wednesday to prepare for a summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, he made some comments that set off alarm bells among Washington officials concerned about America's rivalry with China.
“We're going to talk about Blackwell,” Mr Trump said of his meeting with Mr Xi, referring to US chipmaker Nvidia's most advanced artificial intelligence chip. Mr. Trump called the technology a “super-duper chip”; praised Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang; and explained: “We are about ten years ahead of everyone else when it comes to chips.”
Mr. Trump's comments signaled a major potential shift in U.S. policy that many Washington officials say poses a risk to national security. The sale of such advanced AI chips to China is currently banned, and U.S. officials have been working for years to restrict Beijing's access to the cutting-edge technology.
If the president were to make a U-turn, it would have far-reaching consequences. Nvidia, which has stressed the importance of maintaining access to the Chinese market, would generate new revenue. But critics argue that AI technology is important enough to potentially shift the balance of power in a strategic competition between the United States and China.
On Wednesday, speculation that the Trump administration might soon agree to sell those chips to China galvanized opposition from critics inside and outside the White House and Congress.
Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, said on CNN that the reports had “alarmed” him.
“The defining battle of the 21st century will be who controls artificial intelligence,” he said. “It would be a tragic mistake for President Trump to sell them these important, cutting-edge AI chips in order to get some soybean orders from China.”
In an interview, R. Nicholas Burns, U.S. ambassador to China from 2021 to 2025 and now a Harvard professor, said he hoped the Trump administration would “persist” on U.S. technology sales to China, calling them “a massive mistake.”
China's People's Liberation Army wants to drive out the United States and sees technology as the key to that, Burns said. Chinese laws also require companies to share technology and information with the government upon request.
If China's military becomes stronger over the next decade through better adaptation of technology, the consequences could be devastating for the United States and allies such as Japan, South Korea and India. Any gains for American companies from sales in China would most likely be “very short-lived,” Burns said, as the Chinese government wants to become self-sufficient in chip technology, as in other industries.
“The loss would be incalculable,” Mr. Burns said. “We must prioritize national security over the interests of any one company.”
John Rizzo, an Nvidia spokesman, said in a statement Wednesday: “China has more than enough domestic chips for all of its military applications and has no reason to use our products for this purpose.”
“We support the Trump administration’s vision for America to attract and promote American leadership and jobs,” he said, adding: “National security does not require America to retreat and lose industrial leadership to America’s foreign competitors.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The outcome of Mr Trump's meeting with Mr Xi scheduled for Thursday in South Korea remains to be seen. But the administration has sought an agreement with China that could restore stability to relations and restart some trade, including soybean purchases that China halted after Mr. Trump imposed tariffs this year.
Mr. Trump and other officials have welcomed a possible deal in which China could resume its agricultural purchases, curb exports of chemicals used to make illicit fentanyl and suspend the rollout of its new licensing system for rare earth minerals, while the United States could suspend or repeal some of its tariffs.
Beijing has also pushed the United States to end or withdraw its technology controls and other punitive measures against China, such as new fees on Chinese ships docking at U.S. ports.
A former administration official briefed on the talks said that the Chinese had cut a hard bargain and that Mr. Trump wanted to reach an early agreement with China to buy not only soybeans but also other agricultural products such as barley, wheat, corn and nuts. Mr. Trump has been informed of dwindling political support in communities in Iowa, Kansas and elsewhere affected by Chinese retaliation, the official said. That will impact how the president thinks about next year's midterm elections, the official said.
Mr. Trump said on Wednesday that he expected to lower U.S. tariffs against China, adding that he and Mr. Xi were “working something out.” He said U.S.-China relations are very good and he believes the meeting will have “a very good outcome for our country and the world.”
Nvidia and Mr. Huang, who increasingly enjoys the ear and trust of Mr. Trump, have pushed for Blackwell sales to China. The Silicon Valley company has argued that such sales would strengthen America's leadership in AI
On Tuesday, Mr. Huang said at Nvidia's first conference in Washington that he did not know whether Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi would discuss chips, but argued that allowing Nvidia chips to be sold to China would benefit both countries.
“We want as many countries in the world as possible to build on American technology standards,” he said. Mr. Huang added that half of the world's AI researchers are in China and that cutting them off from Nvidia's technology would hurt U.S. technology development.
In a keynote speech on Tuesday, Mr. Huang also called Nvidia a successor to American innovators such as AT&T, IBM and Apple. He mentioned America more than two dozen times and highlighted how Nvidia began making AI chips in Arizona, which he said Mr. Trump had urged his company to do. He concluded the speech by thanking the audience for “all your service and for making America great again.”
Mr. Huang was expected to travel to South Korea to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, where Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi will meet on the sidelines. Mr. Huang declined to share his travel plans on Tuesday, and an Nvidia spokesman declined to comment on whether Mr. Huang would be present with the two leaders.
In his first term, Mr. Trump cracked down on Chinese technology companies like Huawei, leading to broader and more systematic controls on cutting-edge technology in the Biden administration. Those restrictions have angered Beijing, which called them unfair and fueled efforts to develop China's own technology.
During Mr. Trump's second term, officials initially vowed to limit U.S. support for Chinese AI companies after the release of a new AI system by DeepSeek, a Chinese startup, rocked Washington. In April, the Trump administration decided to block sales to China of an Nvidia chip, the H20, a downgraded version of the company's Hopper chips made specifically for China, because it feared it could accelerate these developments.
After meetings with Mr. Huang, Mr. Trump changed course this summer and said the H20 chip could be sold and the federal government would take a cut of that revenue. That's illegal under current law, but Mr. Huang said on Tuesday that the U.S. government was drafting a regulation to allow those fees to be charged.
Mr. Trump's current and former advisers said that, as with other issues, he has a more transactional view of U.S. technology and sees it as a potential negotiating tool for other successes.
Mr Trump has also focused on the development of the US stock market, where Nvidia is a key driver. On Wednesday, Nvidia became the first publicly traded company to reach a market value of over $5 trillion. On Wednesday in South Korea, Mr. Trump was heard asking about Mr. Huang's whereabouts.
Beijing has discouraged Chinese companies from using the H20 chip and pushed them to try domestic alternatives. But technology experts said the Chinese would most likely welcome the Blackwell sales. Nvidia has developed a scaled-down version of the Blackwell for China, the B30A, which experts say has about half the processing power of a regular Blackwell but several times the capacity of chips China could produce domestically.
Chris McGuire, a former State Department official who helped develop technical controls for the Biden administration, said the sales would eliminate “the biggest advantage America has in AI.”
“Blackwell chips are perhaps the most advanced products in the world,” he said. “It’s a very, very powerful product, and bringing it to China is crazy.”