Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang spoke with President Donald Trump about investment in the US at the Washington White House on April 30, 2025.
Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images
Six Senate Democrats on Friday issued an open letter urging President Donald Trump to reconsider his decision to grant him a tech giant nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices AI semiconductor chips will be sold to China in exchange for 15% of revenue from sales.
Letter – Senator Chuck Schumer, DN.Y. Signed by. Mark Warner, D-Va. Jack Reed, Ph.D. Jeanne Shaheen, Dn. H. ; Christopher Coons, d-del. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. – Nvidia and AMD were responding to Trump’s announcement that the US government would pay the US government a 15% revenue cut from chip sales to China in exchange for export licenses.
“Our national security and military preparation relies on American innovators who invent and produce the best technologies in the world, and rely on maintaining their qualitative advantage in sensitive areas. The United States has historically been successful in maintaining and building on the ability of their enemies to deny access to those technologies,” says the letter country.
“The willingness shown in this arrangement to “negotiate” America’s competitiveness, which is key to our national security, in exchange for the committee on the sale of AI-enabled technologies to our major global competitors, is a source of serious vigilance,” the letter continues.
The senator also warned that selling advanced AI chips, particularly Nvidia’s H20 and AMD’s Mi308 chips to China, will help strengthen the military system.
In a statement to CNBC, an Nvidia spokesman said: “The H20 will not enhance anyone’s military capabilities, but it has helped America attract the support of developers around the world and win AI races.
Requests for comments about the letter from AMD were not immediately returned.
Senate Democrats also requested a detailed response from the administration by Friday, August 22nd, on current deals involving NVIDIA and AMD, as well as similar arrangements with other companies.
“We once again urge your administration to quickly reverse the course and abandon this reckless plan to exchange U.S. technology leadership,” the letter states.
In response, the Trump administration appeared to put aside legislators’ national security concerns.
“It’s very rich to see ‘experts’ unrelated to the Democrats who were completely miserable when Joe Biden’s Autopen administration poured H20 chips and other advanced technologies freely into China,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told CNBC.
Bloomberg reports that Trump, who allows chip sales to resume, has already revealed that China is not welcoming Nvidia with arms crossed, and instead is urging tech companies to avoid buying chips from US companies.
“This is a difficult mission and I’ve heard (the authorities actually) have stopped ordering additional H20s for some companies,” Qingyuan Lin, senior analyst covering Chinese semiconductors at Bernstein, told CNBC.
In another report, the information said Chinese regulators ordered it from major high-tech companies, including the ordinance. Alibabaand Tencent will suspend Nvidia chip purchases until the national security review is complete.
– CNBC’s Kristina Partsinevelos contributed to this report
