Nvidia, AMD want Trump to keep their chips flowing to China
Por Ari Hawkins — POLITICO – TOP Stories
U.S. chipmakers Nvidia and AMD are lobbying the Trump administration to stop lawmakers from curbing their exports to China, highlighting deepening divisions over AI regulation in Washington.
The companies have ramped up outreach to administration officials in recent weeks, including at the White House and senior levels of the Commerce Department, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss their strategy.
Their ask is that the administration pressure lawmakers on Capitol Hill to hold off from enacting China-related chip export restrictions in the annual defense policy bill — a must-pass piece of legislation. The proposed limits have bipartisan support, including from leading Republicans.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is close with Trump and will attend a meeting on artificial intelligence with the president, alongside Speaker Mike Johnson and other tech CEOs at the White House on Tuesday, said a separate person familiar with the plans, granted anonymity to share details that are not public. Huang and AMD CEO Lisa Su were seated at the head table with Trump at the state dinner the White House hosted for Chinese leader Xi Jinping last Thursday.
“A dream scenario would be a direct-to-lawmakers Trump intervention,” said one of the people with knowledge of the campaign who was granted anonymity to discuss it.
The shift in approach, following months of conversations between the companies and Capitol Hill, reflects the tech sector’s increasingly tenuous position in Congress amid rising concern about AI risks. Skepticism of the technology and the companies behind it is on the rise among Republicans and Democrats alike, bolstering China hawks in the senior ranks of both parties. Trump is the most vocal figure in Washington cautioning against an AI slowdown and actively pursuing ways to improve economic ties with China — making him an obvious potential ally for the companies but also putting him at odds with many lawmakers. Should the White House get involved in the fight over the defense bill, it could test his sway over GOP economic and security policy.
Lawmakers who have been pushing to restrict Nvidia and AMD from selling certain high-end chips in China have warned that the pipeline gives Beijing a competitive edge. Some also warn the sales accelerate the proliferation of AI risks as policymakers race to catch up with warnings of catastrophic consequences for humanity.
“Nvidia should never have been allowed to send the frontier chips to China and we should put a halt to it right now,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has pushed to include the export restrictions in the defense bill. In an interview, she suggested the chipmakers’ strategy could succeed.
“So far, the Republican leadership bows to Donald Trump and Donald Trump seems to want to do business with Nvidia, regardless of what it does to our country,” Warren said.
Huang and other industry leaders have argued that cutting off Beijing would only push China to build its own chips and deprive American companies of a massive market, in turn imperiling the AI buildout and America’s position in the global race to develop AI.
The Nvidia CEO has long maintained a close relationship with the president. Huang put Trump on speakerphone while on stage at a tech conference earlier this month, with the president telling him, “I’m with you all the way.”
One of the individuals granted anonymity to discuss the efforts to lobby the administration said it was still in its “early stages,” with the companies initially targeting lower-level administration officials to raise concerns about technical language in the defense bill provisions.
Spokespeople for Nvidia and AMD did not return a request for comment. The White House and the Commerce Department also did not return a request for comment.
Trump already overruled China hawks in Congress and within his own administration late last year to allow Nvidia and AMD to sell some advanced chips to China in exchange for a cut of the profits. And the companies and their allies on K Street are hoping that he and senior officials like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Jeffrey Kessler, the under secretary of Commerce for industry and security, can convince Republican lawmakers to yank the language from the defense package, which the House and Senate are expected to finalize by the end of the year.
AMD, Nvidia and their allies are closely watching a handful of measures aimed at cracking down on China’s access to the world’s most advanced technology and the equipment used to make it. The Senate is expected to include versions of the measures in its National Defense Authorization Act, which has stalled in the chamber and is likely to go straight to negotiations with the House after the November election.
The companies see some of those measures as beyond saving and others as fixable, and they’re tailoring their asks to the administration accordingly.
Their top target is language pulled from the AI OVERWATCH Act, introduced by House Foreign Affairs Chair Brian Mast (R-Fla.) and Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), which would tighten congressional oversight of chips sales to China and other adversaries. The House and Senate versions differ but industry officials object to both. “There’s almost no point engaging in redlining,” one of the industry officials said. “The intent and core of the bill is not workable.”
They believe there are better prospects to amend other measures, including the Chip Security Act, which would require companies to track where in the world certain chips end up. Industry officials are asking lawmakers to make clear, for example, that the measure doesn’t require changes to the chips’ hardware, as well as who in the supply chain is responsible for tracking the chips. They also want more time for companies to comply with the requirements.
Groups representing both Nvidia and AMD have sent multiple letters to senior officials and lawmakers about the legislation making similar complaints.
But support in Congress for tougher restrictions on high-end chips has only hardened in recent weeks, as fears about AI safety spread even to the industry’s own leaders, some of whom have publicly called to slow the development of the technology. For China hawks, the case is simple: if the most powerful models are dangerous in America’s hands, handing Beijing the chips to build them is flat out reckless.
Days before Xi’s visit to Washington, House China Select Committee Chair John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), wrote to Trump urging him to “slow down PRC AI development as much as possible.”
Democrats have gone further. Ahead of Xi’s visit, a group of senior Senate Democrats led by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) accused Trump of failing to block China’s access to American AI technology, and Warren sent a letter to Trump warning him not to let Huang play a role in trade negotiations with Xi, reupping her criticism of the Nvidia CEO and his lobbying efforts to protect the company’s ability to export its advanced AI chips to China.
Trump has rebuffed calls for government intervention in AI, declaring in a Truth Social post earlier this month that claims the technology could take over the world were a “hoax”. In a separate post that same day, he said the only guardrails AI needs is “a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT.”
But he’s also tried to take steps to engage on the issue, highlighting the technology — or what he’s trying to re-name “super intelligence” — with Xi during the summit at the White House last week and hosting Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei for dinner Sunday night, as well as hosting Tuesday’s lunch.
Some senior officials in Trump’s administration are more supportive of the president’s laissez-faire approach than others. One of the tech industry representatives said they view some White House and Commerce Department officials as easier to persuade, and say those officials have shown “sympathy” toward some of their concerns following the meetings. They consider other agencies, including the Pentagon and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer’s office, to be a harder sell.
Deputy White House chief of staff “Stephen Miller wouldn’t want this, Greer would not want this, [chief of staff] Susie Wiles wouldn’t want this,” said a former Commerce Department official under Trump who supports tighter chip restrictions, granted anonymity to speak candidly, “The weakest link on China lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.”
Owen Dahlkamp contributed to this report
Fonte: POLITICO – TOP Stories
