Summary
On July 14, 2025, NVIDIA said it was applying to resume H20 sales to China and had been assured that export licenses would be granted. Separately, on August 11, Trump publicly described a negotiated 15% share of revenue from H20 sales; NPR also reported a corresponding AMD arrangement. The July licensing announcement did not disclose that revenue condition or establish that deliveries had resumed.
Editorial correction, October 26, 2026
The original July 15 date and combined title backdated an August disclosure. NVIDIA's primary announcement is dated July 14 and concerns license assurances and applications. Trump's August 11 press-conference transcript at approximately 01:06-01:07 discusses his initial 20% request and negotiated 15% share. The American Presidency Project preserves a corresponding transcript in its Semiconductor Manufacturing section. NPR's August 11 report was inspected through its VPM syndication because the NPR page denied automated access. These are separate milestones, not evidence that the 15% condition was announced in July.
Revision record with the prior summary and metadata.
The original narrative below is preserved as published; use the revised summary and this note for the corrected account.
What Happened
Approximately three months after imposing the H20 license requirement, the Trump administration negotiated a reversal. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang was among the participants in the discussions with White House officials. The deal, announced in mid-July 2025 and reported in detail by August, allowed Nvidia and AMD to resume sales of advanced AI chips to Chinese customers — including the H20 and AMD's MI308 — in exchange for committing 15% of revenue from those sales to the US Treasury.
Critically, the arrangement was not codified as a formal regulation or published in the Federal Register. It operated as an executive deal — a direct negotiation between the White House and company leadership without the rulemaking process that would normally govern export control changes. Trump had reportedly sought a 20% share but settled at 15% following pushback from the companies about competitive dynamics with Huawei. The deal effectively converted chip export policy from a denial tool into a revenue-sharing mechanism — a structurally novel approach with no clear precedent in export control law.
Why It Matters
The 15% deal represented a fundamental shift in the logic of chip export controls. Traditional export control policy aimed to deny adversaries access to technology that could advance military or strategic capabilities; it was not designed as a revenue mechanism. By converting the H20 restriction into a revenue-sharing arrangement, the Trump administration implicitly acknowledged that denial was incomplete — Huawei's Ascend chips provided meaningful alternatives — and chose extraction over restriction. This raised serious questions about whether export controls were being used for national security purposes or as a negotiating chip in broader US-China economic relations. The informality of the arrangement also created regulatory uncertainty: a deal struck by one administration could be unwound by the next, or by the same administration if political winds shifted.
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