As President Trump flew to South Korea on Wednesday to prepare for a summit with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, he made some remarks that set off alarm bells among Washington officials concerned about America’s rivalry with China.
“We’ll be speaking about Blackwell,” Mr. Trump said of his meeting with Mr. Xi, referring to the most advanced artificial intelligence chip from the U.S. chipmaker Nvidia. Mr. Trump called the technology a “super duper chip”; complimented Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang; and declared, “We’re about 10 years ahead of anybody else in chips.”
Mr. Trump’s comments signaled a major potential change for U.S. policy that many Washington officials warn poses a national security risk. Selling such advanced A.I. chips to China is currently banned, and U.S. officials have worked for years to restrain Beijing’s access to the cutting-edge technology.
The president’s reversal, if it comes to pass, would have widespread implications. Nvidia, which has emphasized the importance of maintaining access to the Chinese market, would reap new sales. But critics have argued that A.I. technology is important enough to potentially shift the balance of power in a strategic competition between the United States and China.
On Wednesday, speculation that the Trump administration may imminently approve the sale of those chips to China mobilized opposition from critics inside and outside the White House and in Congress.
Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, said on CNN that the reports “alarmed” him.
“The defining fight of the 21st century will be who controls artificial intelligence,” he said. “It would be a tragic mistake for President Trump, in order to get some soybean orders out of China, to sell them these critical cutting-edge A.I. chips.”
In an interview, R. Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China from 2021 to 2025 and now a Harvard professor, said he hoped the Trump administration would “hold the line” on U.S. tech sales to China, calling them “a massive mistake.”
The People’s Liberation Army of China wants to dislodge the United States, and sees technology as key to doing that, Mr. Burns said. Chinese laws also require companies to share technology and information with the government if asked.
If the Chinese military became stronger by better adapting technology over the next decade, the consequences for the United States and allies like Japan, South Korea and India could be dire. Any gains for American companies from selling into China would most likely be “very short-lived,” Mr. Burns said, since the Chinese government wants to become self-sufficient in chip technology, as it has in other industries.
“The loss would be incalculable,” Mr. Burns said. “We’ve got to prioritize national security over the interests of any one company.”
Nvidia and the White House did not immediately return requests for comment.
The outcome of Mr. Trump’s meeting with Mr. Xi, scheduled for Thursday in South Korea, remains to be seen. But the administration has sought an arrangement with China that could restore stability to the relationship and restart some commerce, including soybean purchases that China halted after Mr. Trump imposed tariffs this year.
Mr. Trump and other officials have hailed a potential deal in which China could resume those agricultural purchases, curb exports of chemicals used to make illicit fentanyl and pause the introduction of its new licensing system on rare earth minerals, while the United States pauses or removes some of its tariffs.
Beijing has also pushed the United States to halt or roll back its tech controls and other punitive measures against China, like new fees for Chinese ships docking in U.S. ports.
One former government official briefed on the discussions said that the Chinese had driven a hard bargain, and that Mr. Trump had tried to reach an early agreement with China to buy not just soybeans but other farm products, like barley, wheat, corn and nuts. Mr. Trump had been briefed on fraying political support among communities in Iowa, Kansas and elsewhere that have been hurt by Chinese retaliation, the official said. That has influenced how the president is thinking about the midterm elections next year, the official said.
Mr. Trump said Wednesday that he expected to lower U.S. tariffs on China, adding that he and Mr. Xi “would work out something.” He said that the U.S.-Chinese relationship was very good and that he believed the meeting would have “a very good outcome for our country and for the world.”
Nvidia and Mr. Huang, who increasingly has Mr. Trump’s ear and confidence, have pushed for Blackwell sales to China. The Silicon Valley company has argued that such sales would accelerate America’s leading position in A.I.
On Tuesday at Nvidia’s first conference in Washington, Mr. Huang said he did not know whether Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi would discuss chips, but argued that allowing the sale of Nvidia chips to China would benefit both countries.
“We want as many countries around the world to be building on American tech standards,” he said. Mr. Huang added that half of the world’s A.I. researchers were in China, and that if they were cut off from Nvidia’s technology, that would hurt U.S. tech development.
In a keynote speech earlier on Tuesday, Mr. Huang also cast Nvidia as a successor of American innovators like AT&T, IBM and Apple. He mentioned America more than two dozen times and highlighted how Nvidia was beginning to make A.I. chips in Arizona, which he said Mr. Trump had asked his company to do. He closed the speech by thanking the audience for “all for your service and making America great again.”
Mr. Huang was expected to travel to South Korea to participate in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, where Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi will meet on the sidelines. Mr. Huang declined on Tuesday to share his travel plans, and a Nvidia spokesman declined to comment on whether Mr. Huang would be present with the two leaders.
In his first term, Mr. Trump cracked down on Chinese tech companies like Huawei, which led to broader and more systematic controls on cutting-edge technology in the Biden administration. Those restrictions have rankled Beijing, which called them unfair and has stoked efforts to develop China’s own technology.
In Mr. Trump’s second term, officials initially promised to restrict U.S. support of Chinese A.I. companies, after the release of a new A.I. system by DeepSeek, a Chinese start-up, rattled Washington. In April, the Trump administration moved to block the sale to China of one Nvidia chip, the H20, a downgraded version of the company’s Hopper chips made particularly for China, over concerns that it may accelerate those developments.
After meetings with Mr. Huang, Mr. Trump reversed course this summer and said the H20 chip could be sold and that the federal government would take a cut of that revenue. That is illegal under current laws, but Mr. Huang said on Tuesday that the U.S. government was drafting a regulation to be able to collect those fees.
Mr. Trump’s current and former advisers said that, as with other issues, he had a more transactional view of U.S. technology, seeing it as a potential bargaining chip for other wins.
Mr. Trump has also been focused on the performance of the U.S. stock market, of which Nvidia is a major driver. On Wednesday, Nvidia became the first publicly traded company to top $5 trillion in market value. In South Korea on Wednesday, Mr. Trump was heard to ask after Mr. Huang’s location.
Beijing has discouraged Chinese companies from using the H20 chip, pushing them to try domestic alternatives. But tech experts said the Chinese would most likely welcome the Blackwell sales. Nvidia has developed a downgraded version of the Blackwell for China, the B30A, which experts said had about half the computing power of a normal Blackwell but many times the capacity of chips that China could produce domestically.
Chris McGuire, a former State Department official who helped develop the tech controls for the Biden administration, said the sales would “cede the biggest advantage that America has in A.I.”
“Blackwell chips are maybe the most sophisticated products made on earth,” he said. “It is a very, very powerful product, and giving it to China is crazy.”
