Trump Suspends Nvidia Export Ban After Mar-a-Lago Dinner With CEO Jensen Huang
In a dramatic reversal of U.S. tech policy, the Trump administration has suspended its planned export restrictions on Nvidia’s H20 AI chips to China following a private dinner at Mar-a-Lago with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. The move has sent shockwaves through the semiconductor and AI industries, as it allows Chinese tech giants to continue acquiring some of the most advanced AI hardware still legally available to them.
The Dinner That Changed Everything
The policy shift reportedly stems from a high-stakes, invitation-only dinner attended by Trump and Huang last week, with an alleged $1 million admission fee. During the event, Huang made direct appeals to the former president, pledging aggressive domestic AI investments in exchange for relaxed export conditions. According to sources familiar with the discussion, this included plans to expand Nvidia’s footprint in the U.S. AI infrastructure landscape.
Why the H20 Chip Matters
The Nvidia H20 HGX GPU is designed to meet U.S. export compliance thresholds while still delivering enough power for massive AI workloads. It’s a favorite among Chinese firms like ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent, and the AI startup DeepSeek, which has been scaling operations rapidly in anticipation of potential restrictions.
Demand has skyrocketed. In Q1 2025 alone, Chinese companies reportedly ordered over $16 billion worth of H20 chips, an unprecedented surge that reflects Beijing’s urgency in acquiring AI hardware before further sanctions hit. The chip enables inference operations crucial for running models like OpenAI’s GPT, Meta’s LLaMA, and China’s own DeepSeek-V2.
Political and Market Reaction
Nvidia’s stock popped immediately following reports of the reversal. Investors welcomed the potential continuation of sales to China, which remains one of Nvidia’s biggest non-U.S. markets for data center GPUs.
But not everyone is celebrating.
U.S. lawmakers critical of China’s AI ambitions have voiced alarm, saying the move undermines bipartisan efforts to slow China’s AI progress. They argue it weakens national security and contradicts years of tightening tech restrictions aimed at protecting U.S. strategic advantage.
Nvidia’s U.S. Investment Strategy
To sweeten the deal, Huang appears to have made significant commitments to U.S. AI infrastructure. Nvidia recently joined the AI Infrastructure Partnership (AIP), a $30 billion alliance alongside BlackRock and Microsoft that aims to build new data centers and power solutions to support the next wave of AI computing. The group hopes to unlock $100 billion in long-term investment.
At Nvidia’s GTC 2025 conference, Huang previewed massive plans for “AI factories”, mega data centers powered by new networking technologies like Spectrum-X and Quantum-X photonics capable of linking up to a million GPUs in a single cluster. His vision includes AI computing sites so large they’d be “visible from space.”
What This Means Going Forward
Trump’s decision to suspend the ban underscores the growing complexity of balancing national security, economic competitiveness, and diplomatic influence. For Nvidia, it’s a strategic win that preserves access to a massive market while anchoring itself deeper into the U.S. AI ecosystem. For China, it’s a reprieve that may accelerate its AI race, at least for now.
But for Washington policymakers, the question remains: how long can the U.S. play both sides in the global AI arms race?