Nvidia Can Sell H200 Chips To China For 25% US Cut (axios.com)
- Reference: 0180334833
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/12/08/2351223/nvidia-can-sell-h200-chips-to-china-for-25-us-cut
- Source link: https://www.axios.com/2025/12/08/trump-nvidia-200-chips
> Trump [2]said on Truth Social that he'll allow Nvidia to sell H200 chips -- the generation of chips before its current, more-advanced Blackwell lineup -- to China, with the U.S. government pocketing a quarter of the revenue. He said he would apply "the same approach to AMD, Intel, and other GREAT American Companies."
>
> American defense hawks fear that China could use Nvidia chips to advance its military ambitions. Trump said Monday that the sales will be subject to "conditions that allow for continued strong National Security." The blockade remains in place for Nvidia's current generation of Blackwell chips, which will be replaced in the second half of 2026 by even more advanced Rubin chips. Huang said recently he was unsure if China would want the older chips.
"We applaud President Trump's decision to allow America's chip industry to compete to support high paying jobs and manufacturing in America," Nvidia said in a statement. "Offering H200 to approved commercial customers, vetted by the Department of Commerce, strikes a thoughtful balance that is great for America."
[1] https://www.axios.com/2025/12/08/trump-nvidia-200-chips
[2] https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115686072737425841
Sounds like an export tax. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm no lawyer but this sounds suspiciously like an export tax. I think Nvidia now has a solid case that A) it's illegal (only congress can tax stuff, right?) and that B) a ban is unwarranted because of the attempted illegal export tax.
Kinda seems like the grifter just shot himself in the foot again.
Re: Sounds like an export tax. (Score:2)
We will when they're part of the federal government.
Re: (Score:1)
> Kinda seems like the grifter just shot himself in the foot again.
Shoes made of Kevlar as far as I can see. Keeps shooting himself in the foot, but keeps right on walking.
Re: (Score:3)
> Kinda seems like the grifter just shot himself in the foot again.
He suffers no consequence for anything and all the judges he appointed rule in his favor. Republicans could hold a vote tomorrow morning to end his little tariff tirade but they're massive pussies and won't.
Re: (Score:3)
scrotums not pussies! Pussies can take a pounding - a scrotum on the otherhand.....
Re: (Score:3)
Yep, sounds pretty mafia to me.
Re:Sounds like an export tax. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's quaint that you think the United States is still a republic. It's a monarchy, and Trump's handlers are likely moving currently to make sure that when Vance succeeds him, that the Executive branch and a Congress that will be, through the use of naked force if necessary, remain filled with Republican paper tigers to complement the paper tigers in the Supreme Court, settles into the oligarchy the Framers always really intended it to be. The military will largely be used to recreate the American hemispheric hegemony. The National Guard and ICE will be used as foot soldiers within the US to "secure" elections.
The morons that elected that diseased wicked and demented man have destroyed whatever the hell America was. As a Canadian, I can only hope we can withstand this hemispheric dominance and the raiding of our natural resources to feed the perverse desires of the child molesters, rapists, racists and psychopaths that have already taken control of the US.
Doubtless, I will be downvoted by the remaining MAGA crowd here. You know, the guys that pretended they refused to vote Democrat because Bernie wasn't made leader, but are to a man a pack of Brown Shirts eagerly awaiting the time when they imagine they can take part in the defenestration of American society.
Re: (Score:3)
> Kinda seems like the grifter just shot himself in the foot again.
Hegseth double-tapped it for him. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
> I think Nvidia now has a solid case that A) it's illegal (only congress can tax stuff, right?) and that B) a ban is unwarranted because of the attempted illegal export tax.
I'm not sure NVIDIA will object. On the contrary, [1]it appears they have welcomed Trump's new proposal. [livemint.com]
[1] https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/nvidia-wins-partial-china-access-donald-trump-greenlights-h200-shipments-under-new-rules-11765236253462.html
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Maybe but the corporate greed machine is never satisfied. After the first few shipments, they may cry foul.
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No, you see, it's an emergency. The US is being invaded and the president is using his legally granted emergency powers to shake down, er, regulate the flow of trade to China. And deploy the US military against American citizens in American cities. And conduct extrajudicial murder.
the real cost? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because national security is worth less than 25% of retail value!!
Now we're just haggling over the price (Score:3)
Trump told us it was a matter of national security to ban selling these precious chips to China. Now he tells us 25% for the big guy can make that problem go away.
Sounds pretty cheap to me. So much for the Art of the Deal.
Re: (Score:2)
The trump principle has always been to get his cut, nevermind what this does to the value of the overall business. He literally sees no problem in destroying $100B of value if he gets a million or two out of it in cash in his pocket.
Too stupid to figure out a better way than what he did as a "mogul" when he swindled small businesses, he married his daughter to a shrewder figure, who could come up with the "creative" ways to arrange "presents" from Qatar and "investments" from Saudi Arabia and the meme shitc
Yes, an export tax is unconstitutional (Score:2)
But an export ban is not. And it's often said that the power to tax is the power to destroy... it turns out that works both ways. If you can ban exports, you can accept a fee in exchange for not banning them, which is effectively a tax. Not sure if it would hold up in court, but it turns out that nobody willing to challenge it will have standing.
National Security in worth a 20% cut (Score:1)
How quickly would Barack Obama or Joe Biden have been impeached and convicted if they had done this?
My "angle" on this.. (Score:2)
My thought is that clever engineers and programmers can easily make other chips work as well or better than NVidia chips. It really is a "nothing burger", except that Trump thinks he is "winning". Let him accept his "Peace Prize" from the soccer organization, Let him think he is King. It is still a nothing burger compared the great contributions that hardware, and software engineers give to society over all.
Is there even a veneer of plausibility here? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, in order to protect against possible military applications(known for their cost-sensitivity...); we are making the sale legal as long as El Presidente gets his cut? That's in character, sure; but what's the paper-thin excuse for that being a cogent policy idea?
So hear me out on this one (Score:4, Interesting)
What if, and I'm just spitballing here, the news media barely covered this and certainly didn't cover the corruption angle at all because the news media is now completely owned by billionaires like something like literally 90% of the news media is owned by billionaires.
So almost nobody hears about this and then the news cycle eats the attention of anyone who does and we all just move on and forget about it. Does that work for you?
In project 2025 they call it shock and awe. Everything is a distraction from the previous terrible thing Trump did and everything Trump does next is a distraction from whatever he's doing at the time. Meanwhile the economy is continuously collapsing due to mismanagement so you're too busy trying to keep your head above water to care about anything else.
Then you mix in a little voter suppression and the fact that a billionaire Trump sycophant just bought the company that controls all of our voting machines and maybe do a few hundred billion dollars of propaganda right before the election and Bob's your uncle Trump gets a third term or at least JD Vance gets his term.
Then we had 25% unemployment, world war III takes off and goes nuclear and we Fermi paradox ourselves. I don't think the billionaires are planning on that last one but I don't think they are thinking any of this through either. They're just too busy trying to set themselves up as feudal Kings.
Re:Is there even a veneer of plausibility here? (Score:4, Insightful)
> So, in order to protect against possible military applications(known for their cost-sensitivity...); we are making the sale legal as long as El Presidente gets his cut? That's in character, sure; but what's the paper-thin excuse for that being a cogent policy idea?
Cogent sailed a while ago. Here's a quote from [1]Trump announces $12 billion bailout plan for farmers hit by trade war with China [youtube.com] (12m:16s) :
> And this money would not be possible without tariffs. The tariffs are taken in, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars and we're giving some up to the farmers ...
Noting that's technically true, but nonsensical: Farmers need a bailout because of tariff / trade war that Trump started and he says bailout wouldn't be possible without the tariffs -- which are paid by U.S. companies and consumers. Once again, solving, or at least mitigating, a problem he started and proud of it. For example, China was buying tons of soybeans from the U.S. before he imposed tariffs, now they're buying them from Brazil.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFm2dpZtBjA&t=736s
Re: Is there even a veneer of plausibility here? (Score:1)
"Rabo cites a new trade war with China would drop soybean prices $1.50 to $2 a bushel and reduce soybean planting by as many as 5 million acres." - Jan 7 2025
Does the higher price per bushel of soybeans now contradict that narrative?
And, even if 5 million acres were not planted due to lack of demand, if that represents only $3 billion, at most, by how much will Trump's $12 billion exceed losses from tariffs?
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Not to worry those farmers will cash their checks and then sell their land to build data centers over the next 12 months.
At least those rural areas might finally get internet, that is assuming there is any RAM left to make devices that can get online.
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Yeah the prices have gone up. But thats due to input tarifs. The thing thats squeezing US farmers, other than losing all their export markets, is that all their machinery and fertilizer costs have skyrocketed. A combine harvester is a huge investment, not just in initial outlay but continued maintainence. Couple that with fertilizer costs soaring (some of that is due to the ukraine invasion but most of its tarifs) and the loss of an affordable workforce due to ICEs rampage, and its really bad days for farme
Re: (Score:2)
>> And this money would not be possible without tariffs. The tariffs are taken in, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars and we're giving some up to the farmers ...
> Noting that's technically true, but nonsensical: Farmers need a bailout because of tariff / trade war that Trump started and he says bailout wouldn't be possible without the tariffs -- which are paid by U.S. companies and consumers. Once again, solving, or at least mitigating, a problem he started and proud of it. For example, China was buying tons of soybeans from the U.S. before he imposed tariffs, now they're buying them from Brazil.
Taxes are simply a form of economy shaping using redistribution of money. In this case, the tariffs took money from companies and will give them to farmers. Of course, the companies eventually pass along the tariff costs, so in essence Trump took money from consumers to give to farmers.
This sounds bad, but not compared to Trump gifting Argentina $20 billion so that Argentina could displace US soybean going to China. All this just to help prop up a fellow right-wing populist.
Re: (Score:2)
No, no, no, you're taking it the wrong way. This as a reverse tariff , a very powerful instrument, more powerful than any instrument, it is going to be paid by the big, bad, bad communist Gyna, which by the way is a great country that we can do a lot of business with and we do have a great relationship with Gyna they now respect us much more than ever, and at the same time this reverse tariff will MARA! Yes, that R stands there for "Rich".
Don't be so bitter that you dislike only because your bad, rotten peop