The Senate introduced bill to block Nvidia from selling H200 and Blackwell AI chips to China

The Senate moved on Thursday to block Nvidia from sending its most advanced AI chips to China, according to the Financial Times.

Lawmakers rolled out a bipartisan bill that would force a 30-month halt on any export approvals for the company’s H200 and Blackwell chips. The whole point is to stop Beijing from getting hardware that could supercharge its own AI systems. The timing is not random. The White House, under Donald Trump, has been considering whether those chips should still be allowed to leave the country. That internal debate triggered pushback from lawmakers who think the US is giving China too much room to grow in high-end compute.

The proposal is called the Secure and Feasible Exports Chips Act, and it orders the commerce secretary to deny export licenses for top-tier processors going into China for two and a half years. That would effectively shut down all H200 and Blackwell sales to the region. These chips sit at the heart of large AI models, data-center clusters, and national-scale compute power. Lawmakers argue China should not have direct access to anything this strong while the two countries compete for the lead in AI.

Senators defend strict controls on advanced chip exports

The bill is led by Pete Ricketts, the Republican chair of the Senate foreign relations East Asia sub-committee, and Chris Coons, the panel’s top Democrat. Pete said the US is ahead in the AI race because of its “dominance of global compute power” and argued that “denying Beijing access to these chips is therefore essential.” He added that locking in restrictions already set by President Trump while US firms continue to innovate would “allow us to widen our compute lead exponentially.”

Chris said the contest will shape “the rest of the 21st century” and asked whether the future will be built on American ideas of “free thought and free markets” or those of the Chinese Communist Party. Other backers include Republicans Tom Cotton and Dave McCormick, along with Democrats Jeanne Shaheen and Andy Kim.

Their push lands in the middle of deeper tension in Washington. Some China hawks believe Donald Trump is avoiding stronger security actions to protect the trade deal he negotiated with Xi Jinping last October. On Wednesday, the Financial Times reported that the US Treasury paused a plan to sanction China’s Ministry of State Security over a cyber operation called “Salt Typhoon,” which hit American telecom companies. Senior US officials also said the administration is not planning major new export controls on China for now.

Industry leaders clash with Washington over chip policy

Tech analyst Saif Khan from the Institute for Progress said China would gain major advantages if it secured unrestricted access to the H200. Saif said it would let Beijing build frontier-level supercomputers for cutting-edge AI, even if costs were slightly higher than running Blackwell chips. He added that it would also help Chinese cloud firms compete with large US cloud providers.

Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief, met Donald Trump and Republican senators from the banking committee on Wednesday. Before going in, Jensen said China would not accept weaker chips and argued US companies should be able to export their best hardware instead of downgraded versions.

Senator John Kennedy, a Republican on the committee, dismissed Jensen’s stance. Kennedy told reporters that Jensen was not a “credible source” on what technology the US should send to China. Kennedy said, “He’s got more money than the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, and he wants even more,” before adding that Jensen was not who he would trust for “objective advice.”

Former White House strategist Steve Bannon, a key figure in the Maga movement, said the US should stop sending advanced chips to China altogether. Bannon pointed to the rise of Chinese AI groups like DeepSeek and said, “If this is in fact a ‘Sputnik Moment’ because of DeepSeek then we should ban all chip sales, especially high-end, but also stop all financial support — no access to debt or equity capital markets, no training, no Chinese students — just like in the cold war about nuclear weapons.”

Bannon also took aim at Jensen and David Sacks, the White House AI adviser who supports a controlled export plan to make foreign firms rely on the American tech stack. Bannon said, “David Sacks has acted as the agent for the Chinese Communist party and Jensen Huang is the arms merchant.”

When asked about the bill, Nvidia said the AI action plan “wisely recognizes non-military businesses everywhere should be able to choose the American technology stack, promoting US jobs and promoting national security.” Responding to Bannon, the company said, “AI is not an atomic bomb. No one should have an atomic bomb. Everyone should have AI.”

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