By Jon Markman
Publication Date: 2026-05-18 16:26:00
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 18: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivers a keynote address during the Nvidia GTC Artificial Intelligence Conference at SAP Center on March 18, 2024 in San Jose, California. The developer conference is expected to highlight new chip, software, and AI processor technology. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
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China Rejected Nvidia’s H200s, But The Global AI Demand Still Needs Every H200 Nvidia Can Build.
President Trump confirmed on Friday what the markets had been pricing in since Wednesday. Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on the return flight from Beijing, he said China had “chose not to” approve purchases of Nvidia’s H200 because Xi Jinping “wants to develop their own.” The two-day summit produced agricultural commitments and not much else on chips. The 750,000-unit H200 license ceiling the Commerce Department cleared on May 14 still exists on paper. Not one chip has shipped.
The terms of the license were unusual. Under the framework Trump announced in December 2025 and Commerce formalized in January, Nvidia would have remitted 25% of revenue on each China sale to the US Treasury, every China-bound shipment would have passed through a US-headquartered third-party verification laboratory, and total volume could not exceed 50% of Nvidia’s domestic US sales of the same chip. Those terms describe more than an export permit. Whether or not the structure can be renegotiated in a future round, this version of it did…
