Trump Reverses Nvidia H20 Ban with 15% Revenue Share

Summary

The Trump administration reversed its April H20 export ban in July 2025 through an informal deal — not a formal regulation — in which Nvidia and AMD agreed to remit 15% of China chip sale revenue to the US Treasury, down from Trump's initial demand of 20%.

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.