House GOP wants final say on AI chip exports after Trump gives Nvidia a China hall pass
(2026/01/21)
- Reference: 1769028792
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2026/01/21/house_gop_ai_chip_exports_trump_china_nvidia/
- Source link:
President Trump's decision to green-light the sale of Nvidia H200 GPUs to China isn't sitting well with some of his Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives. These GOP politicians have proposed a bill that would give Congress final say over the export of AI chips to China and other countries of concern.
Introduced by Rep. Brian Mast (R‑FL) in December, the " [1]AI Overwatch Act " would give the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which Mast chairs, and the Senate Banking Committee at least 30 days to review and, if necessary, block the export of sensitive AI chips to adversary nations.
On Wednesday, the Foreign Affairs Committee [2]voted overwhelmingly to advance the measure to the House of Representatives with a favorable recommendation.
[3]
"When the United States considers selling a C-130 or a fighter jet, or an engine that goes on one of those airframes, or ordnance that goes on the wing of a jet, or the avionics that go in a cockpit, or anything that has military use, it goes through a process known as the foreign military sales process," Mast said during a Foreign Affairs Committee meeting on Wednesday.
[4]
[5]
Mast argues that the bill extends this same expectation of congressional oversight to the GPUs and accelerators that are now the subject of the AI arms race.
"If we were just talking about war games on Xbox, then Jensen Huang can sell as many chips as he wants to anybody that he wants, and I should have absolutely no business having a say about whether he wants to do that. But this is not about kids playing Halo on their television."
[6]
For the record, it's been a quarter century since Microsoft shipped an Xbox with Nvidia graphics on board.
Mast is not the only Republican lawmaker who has expressed concern over the shift in the Trump administration's trade policy. In a [7]letter to US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick last month, John Moolenaar (R-MI), the Chair of the House Select Committee on China, expressed his concerns with the reasoning behind allowing H200 sales to China.
Moolenaar cited reports showing that China still trailed American chip designs despite advancements in rack-scale architectures — specifically, Huawei's CloudMatrix-384, which we explored in detail [8]here .
[9]
"I am fully committed to advancing President Trump's vision for enduring U.S. AI dominance," Moolenaar wrote at the time. "I have serious concerns that granting China access to potentially millions of chips that are generations beyond its domestic capabilities will undermine those objectives."
The [10]H200 export deal itself is unusual in that sales of the chips are contingent on Uncle Sam getting a 25 percent cut of the revenues.
[11]Trump promises nuclear datacenter permits in 3 weeks, calls Greenland 'big beautiful ice'
[12]Nvidia leans on emulation to squeeze more HPC oomph from AI chips in race against AMD
[13]OpenAI to serve up ChatGPT on Cerebras' AI dinner plates in $10B+ deal
[14]Anthropic CEO: Selling H200s to China is like giving nukes to North Korea
These calls for greater oversight of American AI exports have caught the attention of high-level White House officials.
Taking to the social network turned deepfake porn generator formerly known as Twitter, White House AI advisor David Sacks [15]endorsed a post that speculated that the bill had been orchestrated by "never Trumpers" with financial support from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. "Correct," Sacks wrote in a retweet of the post.
Amodei has repeatedly rallied for stiffer controls on the export of American AI accelerators to China. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week, the exec [16]likened shipments of H200 accelerators to China to giving nukes to North Korea.
However, even if the AI Overwatch Act has won support in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, it still faces a long and uncertain road to becoming law. The bill will also need to pass in the House, Senate, and be signed by the president (or have his veto overridden) before Congress will get a say over US AI exports. ®
Get our [17]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/6875/all-actions
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kx8NbMLq0bQ
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aXFamH_y7R55PK-AJ0ayUgAAAMA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aXFamH_y7R55PK-AJ0ayUgAAAMA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
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[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aXFamH_y7R55PK-AJ0ayUgAAAMA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://chinaselectcommittee.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/select-committee-h200-letter-to-lutnick-december-2025_0.pdf
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/29/huawei_rackscale_boogeyman/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aXFamH_y7R55PK-AJ0ayUgAAAMA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/09/trump_gpu_export_ban_reversal/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/21/american_genius_says_dont_panic/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/18/nvidia_fp64_emulation/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/15/openai_cerebras_ai/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/20/anthropic_nvidia_china/
[15] https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/2011959576678002710
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/20/anthropic_nvidia_china/
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Introduced by Rep. Brian Mast (R‑FL) in December, the " [1]AI Overwatch Act " would give the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which Mast chairs, and the Senate Banking Committee at least 30 days to review and, if necessary, block the export of sensitive AI chips to adversary nations.
On Wednesday, the Foreign Affairs Committee [2]voted overwhelmingly to advance the measure to the House of Representatives with a favorable recommendation.
[3]
"When the United States considers selling a C-130 or a fighter jet, or an engine that goes on one of those airframes, or ordnance that goes on the wing of a jet, or the avionics that go in a cockpit, or anything that has military use, it goes through a process known as the foreign military sales process," Mast said during a Foreign Affairs Committee meeting on Wednesday.
[4]
[5]
Mast argues that the bill extends this same expectation of congressional oversight to the GPUs and accelerators that are now the subject of the AI arms race.
"If we were just talking about war games on Xbox, then Jensen Huang can sell as many chips as he wants to anybody that he wants, and I should have absolutely no business having a say about whether he wants to do that. But this is not about kids playing Halo on their television."
[6]
For the record, it's been a quarter century since Microsoft shipped an Xbox with Nvidia graphics on board.
Mast is not the only Republican lawmaker who has expressed concern over the shift in the Trump administration's trade policy. In a [7]letter to US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick last month, John Moolenaar (R-MI), the Chair of the House Select Committee on China, expressed his concerns with the reasoning behind allowing H200 sales to China.
Moolenaar cited reports showing that China still trailed American chip designs despite advancements in rack-scale architectures — specifically, Huawei's CloudMatrix-384, which we explored in detail [8]here .
[9]
"I am fully committed to advancing President Trump's vision for enduring U.S. AI dominance," Moolenaar wrote at the time. "I have serious concerns that granting China access to potentially millions of chips that are generations beyond its domestic capabilities will undermine those objectives."
The [10]H200 export deal itself is unusual in that sales of the chips are contingent on Uncle Sam getting a 25 percent cut of the revenues.
[11]Trump promises nuclear datacenter permits in 3 weeks, calls Greenland 'big beautiful ice'
[12]Nvidia leans on emulation to squeeze more HPC oomph from AI chips in race against AMD
[13]OpenAI to serve up ChatGPT on Cerebras' AI dinner plates in $10B+ deal
[14]Anthropic CEO: Selling H200s to China is like giving nukes to North Korea
These calls for greater oversight of American AI exports have caught the attention of high-level White House officials.
Taking to the social network turned deepfake porn generator formerly known as Twitter, White House AI advisor David Sacks [15]endorsed a post that speculated that the bill had been orchestrated by "never Trumpers" with financial support from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. "Correct," Sacks wrote in a retweet of the post.
Amodei has repeatedly rallied for stiffer controls on the export of American AI accelerators to China. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week, the exec [16]likened shipments of H200 accelerators to China to giving nukes to North Korea.
However, even if the AI Overwatch Act has won support in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, it still faces a long and uncertain road to becoming law. The bill will also need to pass in the House, Senate, and be signed by the president (or have his veto overridden) before Congress will get a say over US AI exports. ®
Get our [17]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/6875/all-actions
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kx8NbMLq0bQ
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aXFamH_y7R55PK-AJ0ayUgAAAMA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aXFamH_y7R55PK-AJ0ayUgAAAMA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aXFamH_y7R55PK-AJ0ayUgAAAMA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aXFamH_y7R55PK-AJ0ayUgAAAMA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://chinaselectcommittee.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/select-committee-h200-letter-to-lutnick-december-2025_0.pdf
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/29/huawei_rackscale_boogeyman/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aXFamH_y7R55PK-AJ0ayUgAAAMA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/09/trump_gpu_export_ban_reversal/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/21/american_genius_says_dont_panic/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/18/nvidia_fp64_emulation/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/15/openai_cerebras_ai/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/20/anthropic_nvidia_china/
[15] https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/2011959576678002710
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/20/anthropic_nvidia_china/
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
nobody who matters
"The H200 export deal itself is unusual in that sales of the chips are contingent on Uncle Sam getting a 25 percent cut of the revenues."
Is that Uncle Sam, or Uncle Donald ?
But how....
...is Trump going to get his kickbacks if others start meddling?