Top Republican on House China panel questions reversal of Nvidia chip curbs

Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, is pushing back on the Trump administration’s decision to allow technology company Nvidia to sell certain artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China once again. 

In a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Friday, the congressman raised concerns about the reversal on Nvidia’s H20 chips, suggesting it could boost China’s AI capabilities. 

“The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” Moolenaar wrote. 

Nvidia announced Monday that the chipmaker is filing out applications to sell its H20 chips again after receiving assurances from the Trump administration that its licenses would be granted. 

The chipmaker revealed earlier this year that the U.S. government was implementing new licensing requirements that would limit its ability to sell the chips in China. The reversal came shortly after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang met with President Trump. 

Lutnick suggested the Trump administration opted to ease the restrictions as part of a broader rare earth deal with China, underscoring that Beijing is only getting Nvidia’s “fourth best” chip. 

However, Moolenaar argued the key issue is how the H20 chip compares to those being developed in China and proposed the Commerce Department peg its export controls to a “slight technical improvement” on China’s current capabilities. 

“As the Trump administration has repeatedly stated, the U.S. must ensure that American rather than Chinese tech companies build the global AI infrastructure,” he added. “At the same time, however, we must also ensure that the world does not adopt Chinese AI models trained on U.S. technology.”  

“Approving the sale of large volumes of H20s could give China the computer power it needs to develop powerful AI models that are open to users free of charge as DeepSeek has done with R1,” Moolenaar continued. “As China has done in so many other industries, this is a deliberate strategy to capture market share and become the global standard.”