U.S. Commerce Secretary says Nvidia still hasn’t sold any H200 AI GPUs to China — Chinese government is blocking imports in an attempt to push domestic semiconductor industry

It’s been four months since President Donald Trump lifted the ban on Nvidia selling its H200 AI chips to China, but Commerce Department Secretary Howard Lutnick says that the company still has yet to sell one to Chinese companies. According to Reuters, Lutnick said Beijing is making it difficult for Chinese companies to get permission to import these chips, as the Chinese Communist Party is focused on supporting its domestic semiconductor industry.

“The Chinese central government has not let them, as of yet, buy the chips, because they’re trying to keep their investment focused on their own domestic industry,” Lutnick said. “We have not sold them chips as of yet.”

Lutnick made the same statement in late February during a House hearing, when asked about the status of H200 sales. However, Nvidia claimed that it already received orders and export licenses for multiple Chinese customers at GTC 2026 last month. These conflicting statements make the current situation unclear — especially as it’s also been reported that AI chip exports are bottlenecked at the Bureau of Industry and Security, where undersecretary Jeffrey Kessler has reportedly been personally reviewing each individual application.

The U.S. is finally allowing Nvidia to export its chips to China again, with a 25% fee, and many major Chinese firms such as Alibaba and ByteDance were reportedly ready to order hundreds of thousands of…