White House: Trump’s Export Deals With Nvidia, AMD Could Expand to Other Firms
The Trump administration may consider expanding the revenue-sharing arrangements that it reached with Nvidia and AMD to other U.S. companies, the White House said this week.
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“Right now, it stands with these two companies. Perhaps it could expand in the future to other companies,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said during an Aug. 12 press conference. “I think it's a creative idea and solution.”
The administration said earlier this week that Nvidia and AMD will pay the government 15% of the total revenue from exporting certain chips to China in exchange for being granted export licenses. Several former U.S. officials and lawmakers questioned whether the arrangement was legal (see 2508110044).
Leavitt said the administration is still working out what the deals will look like.
“The legality of it, the mechanics of it, is still being ironed out by the Department of Commerce, and I would defer you to them for any further details on how it will actually be implemented,” she told reporters. “But again, this was another idea of the president and his brain trust on his trade team to try to get good deals for the American people and the American taxpayer.”
Commerce and the Bureau of Industry and Security haven’t responded to multiple requests for comment.
Trump confirmed the arrangement about a month after the administration said it would be approving exports of Nvidia’s previously restricted H20 chips to China as part of a deal reached earlier this year between Washington and Beijing, a rare instance of the U.S. including national security-related trade restrictions as part of trade talks (see 2507150013).
Wendy Cutler, vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute and a former U.S. trade negotiator, said export controls were never on the negotiating table during her time serving under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Because Washington already eased its H20 controls, she said Beijing will likely push the U.S. to continue loosening other restrictions, and that will make trade talks more difficult.
“The Trump administration now has opened the door, and China is going to take advantage of that opening,” Cutler said Aug. 12 on Bloomberg Television.
She added that the U.S. soon will have to make a decision about whether it will continue to supply China the chips “that it really wants and needs to bolster its own advanced AI and high-tech industry, or does it kind of double down and say, you know what, we're not going to supply these chips and other high-tech goods.”
That decision will be “difficult,” she said. “And I think there are probably a lot of internal discussions going on in the administration, because I don't think everyone's probably on the same page as the president on this one.”