NVIDIA and AMD will give 15% of revenues from AI chip sales to China to the US, Trump confirms

US President Donald Trump has confirmed that an agreement has been reached with GPU manufacturers to export their solutions to China. At the same time, he said that NVIDIA supplies outdated chips to China that are significantly behind modern American solutions.

Additional tax on sales to China

The Trump administration has reportedly reached an agreement with NVIDIA and AMD under which the companies will transfer 15% of their sales revenue in China to the US government. Initially, according to the president, he demanded 20%, but NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang managed to reduce this share. Such a format of cooperation is unprecedented, as it actually involves targeted taxation of income from a particular market in exchange for maintaining the possibility of trade with it. Moreover, this additional taxation marks yet another interference by the president in corporate decision-making. He has previously put pressure on executives to invest in American production, and demanded the resignation of Intel’s new CEO Lip-Bu Tan through ties with Chinese companies.

Analysts said that the additional tax could hit the profitability of chipmakers and set a precedent for taxing critical US exports. Over time, this practice may extend beyond semiconductors.

When asked whether NVIDIA had agreed to pay 15% of its revenues to the US, the company spokesperson replied:

An AMD spokesperson said the US has approved its applications to export some AI processors to China. However, he did not directly address the revenue-sharing agreement and said that the company’s business complies with all US export regulations.

Last fiscal year, NVIDIA received $17 billion in revenue from China, accounting for 13% of its total sales. AMD reported $6.2 billion in revenue from China in 2024, accounting for 24% of the total.

Limited chips for China

Trump also said that future AI-oriented GPUs for the Chinese market will have artificially low performance to prevent local customers from gaining an advantage in the field of artificial intelligence. In fact, the US government will not allow the supply of advanced AI chips capable of state-of-the-art computing to China, and NVIDIA will have to limit itself to stripped-down versions. So, despite his own fears that China could use American AI capabilities to strengthen its military, Trump agreed to the deal.

Against this backdrop, rumors about NVIDIA developing an AI chip with GDDR7 memory specifically for China look more plausible. However, there is no official confirmation yet.

Trump specifically mentioned the NVIDIA H20 AI accelerator, calling it «outdated» and significantly inferior to current GPUs available to customers in the United States. Indeed, the H20 has been present on the Chinese domestic market for several years, and in terms of performance, it lags far behind advanced solutions such as the Blackwell series.

At the same time, Trump suggests that he may eventually even approve the sale of newer NVIDIA chips to China.

It is worth noting that the Trump administration suspended the sale of NVIDIA H20 chips to China in April. But last month, the company said it had received permission to resume shipments and hoped to start them soon. A US official added last Friday that the US Department of Commerce has begun issuing licenses to sell H20 chips to China.

Analysts and experts have questioned the logic of resuming sales to China if the chips could pose a threat to national security. Some elements of Trump’s trade policy are already under legal scrutiny.

Demand for H20 in China remains strong, but with the growing need for AI and big computing capacity, this situation could change dramatically next year. If Chinese companies lack the performance of H20 and do not have access to flagship GPUs, demand may shift to alternative suppliers or local development.

Source: wccftech, cybernews