Schumer accuses Trump of 'selling out America' after greenlighting Nvidia AI chip exports to China

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., accused President Donald Trump on Tuesday of "selling out America" for announcing that the U.S. will allow Nvidia to export its artificial-intelligence chips to China and other countries. 

Trump said Monday that the U.S. will gain a 25% share from the H200 chip exports and that the trade will be closely monitored to safeguard national security. 

"Donald Trump is just selling out America for his own ego and his own gain. That's what he's doing on chips," Schumer said Tuesday. "When yesterday, Donald Trump announced he was giving the green light to Nvidia to send even more powerful AI chips to China, the H200, which are used to train AI models." 

"Let's be clear. You can't claim to be tough on China if you willingly sell them some of the most advanced chips in the world, so they can use it to strengthen their military," Schumer added. 

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FOX Business has reached out to the White House for comment. 

The H200 chips are high-performance processors made by Nvidia that help run artificial intelligence programs, like chatbots, machine learning and data-center tasks.  

In a statement to Fox News, Nvidia welcomed Trump's announcement. 

"We applaud President Trump's decision to allow America's chip industry to compete to support high paying jobs and manufacturing in America," an Nvidia spokesperson said. "Offering H200 to approved commercial customers, vetted by the Department of Commerce, strikes a thoughtful balance that is great for America." 

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However, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party criticized the announcement, describing in a post on X that, "Right now, China is far behind the United States in chips that power the AI race." 

"Because the H200s are far better than what China can produce domestically, both in capability and scale, Nvidia selling these chips to China could help it catch up to America in total compute," the committee said Tuesday. "Publicly available analysis indicates that the H200 provides 32% more processing power and 50% more memory bandwidth than China’s best chip. The CCP will use these highly advanced chips to strengthen its military capabilities and totalitarian surveillance." 

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"Finally, Nvidia should be under no illusions — China will rip off its technology, mass produce it themselves, and seek to end Nvidia as a competitor," the committee also said. "That is China’s playbook and it is using it in every critical industry." 

FOX Business’ Bonny Chu contributed to this report.