Report: US senators plan to introduce bill blocking Nvidia from selling advanced chips to China for 30 months
US senators are on the verge of introducing a bill that would block Nvidia from selling its H200 or Blackwell chips to China for 30 months, the Financial Times reports. The H200 is Nvidia’s best chip from the Hopper generation, while the Blackwell line is its current flagship offering.
Shares of the chip designer are little changed in the wake of this report, still up more than 1% on the session. The reaction makes sense, seeing as previous positive indications on Nvidia’s ability to sell advanced chips to China failed to inspire much positive momentum in its shares.
The stock got a short-lived jolt higher (that didn’t last the day!) on November 21 after Bloomberg reported that the Trump administration had discussed the possibility of selling its H200 chips to China.
Nvidia has effectively been shut out of China’s AI market in 2025. First, export restrictions meant it could no longer sell the H20, a nerfed version of its Hopper chip, to the world’s second-largest economy. After that export ban was lifted, demand from China “never materialized,” per Nvidia CFO Colette Kress. Reports indicate that China banned its leading technology giants from purchasing these semiconductors, instead pushing them toward domestic alternatives.
President Donald Trump had mused about allowing Nvidia to sell Blackwell chips to China prior to his meeting with Chinese President Xi in late October, but failed to do so. The two leaders did not discuss the topic at that time.
Per the FT, this upcoming bill would be a bipartisan effort, being cosponsored by the leading Republican and Democrat members of the Senate Foreign Relations East Asia subcommittee.
