Lawmakers, Former Officials Call on Trump to Reverse Decision to Allow H20 Chips Exports to China

The former officials and researchers called the decision a “strategic misstep" that will undermine American technology leadership, while the Democrats, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the chips will advance a key adversary’s AI capabilities and threaten U.S. national and economic security.

The letters come about two weeks after U.S. officials said they would be lifting controls on Nvidia’s H20 chip as part of an agreement Washington and Beijing reached during trade talks (see 2507150013). The announcement was a sharp pivot from the administration’s stance in April, when it informed Nvidia of new incense requirements for those chips out of concerns they would be used to power Chinese supercomputers (see 2504160026).

“The decision to ban H20 exports earlier this year was the right one,” said one letter, which was signed by multiple former high-ranking officials who served under both Republican and Democratic administrations, along with several former congressional staffers. They include Matt Pottinger, former deputy national security adviser during Trump’s first term; Liza Tobin, former China director at the National Security Council during both the Trump and Biden administrations; and Peter Mattis, former staff director of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

“We ask you to stand by that principle and continue blocking the sale of advanced AI chips to China as America works to maintain its technological edge,” they said.

David Sacks, the president's AI policy adviser, justified the looser restrictions earlier this month by calling the H20 a “heavily deprecated chip” and noting that the U.S. isn’t selling “our state-of-the-art” advanced semiconductors to China. But former officials signing the letter appeared to disagree with Sacks, saying the H20 is a “potent accelerator of China’s frontier AI capabilities, not an outdated AI chip.”

They said it’s “designed specifically to work around export control thresholds” and is “optimized for inference, the process responsible for the dramatic capabilities gains made by the latest generation of frontier AI reasoning models.” The H20 outperforms the H100 for inference tasks, and they noted that the U.S. has restricted exports of the H100 “due to its advanced capabilities.”

The former officials also said Chinese AI labs tried to bulk order H20 chips to develop advanced AI models earlier this year after the DeepSeek breakthrough -- the Chinese startup that announced a powerful AI model in January (see 2505020043 and 2504160039).

“Both U.S. and Chinese AI labs are betting that further investment in inference compute will be critical to the next leap in frontier AI capabilities,” the letter said. “If the U.S. backs off of export controls to China, we believe that China’s next generation of frontier AI will be built on the backs of the H20.”

Although China’s largest buyers of H20s are “nominally civilian companies,” the former officials said they expect China’s military to use the chip. They said this could allow China to develop advanced “autonomous weapons systems, intelligence surveillance platforms” and to make “rapid advances in battlefield decision-making.” They also said looser export controls will mean fewer advanced chips for American companies, noting that Chinese bulk orders of H20s will further squeeze supply.

“Every H20 chip shipped to China requires scarce resources that could have been allocated to producing AI chips for U.S. developers,” they said. “At a time when chips are in critically short supply, we should be prioritizing American innovation, not allowing a strategic competitor to drive up costs.”

Industry observers also have said the decision to approve H20 chip exports to China could hurt U.S. credibility the next time it tries to convince allies to restrict their own advanced technology shipments to China (see 2507160046). The former officials in the letter made similar points, saying the move is “likely to generally weaken export controls as an effective foreign policy tool” for the U.S.

“This policy reversal is likely to create confusion among both allies and competitors,” they said, “and may even be interpreted as a weakening of U.S. resolve on other key issues in which trade and national security may be in tension with one another.” They also said it could “embolden” Beijing to push the U.S. or other countries to lift other technology restrictions.

“This is not a question of trade,” the letter said. “It is a question of national security.”

The five senators in their letter said they have “grave concern” about the administration’s move. They said the H20 is more capable than chips made in China, which wants to use AI to bolster its military and commercial technology.

The senators also criticized the administration for not consulting with Congress about the policy change and for using export controls as a bargaining chip in trade talks with China. "We shouldn't be trading away key technological advantages as if they are concessions in a trade negotiation," the letter says.

In addition to Schumer, the letter is signed by Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Mark Warner of Virginia, and Chris Coons of Delaware, the top Democrats on the Banking and Armed Services committees, the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. Schumer briefly addressed his concerns in a Senate floor speech July 21 (see 2507210067).

The Commerce Department didn't respond to a request for comment on either letter.