On December 13, 2025, members of both the House and Senate in the United States expressed concerns and criticism to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, in letters regarding the Trump administration’s approval of Nvidia’s sale of advanced H200 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China.
Democratic senators such as Elizabeth Warren criticized that this move could jeopardize national security. Meanwhile, John Moolenaar, Chairman of the Special Committee on China in the House of Representatives, raised concerns about the shift in export policy potentially weakening the U.S.’s strategic advantage in advanced technology and questioned the claim that “Huawei’s AI chips can rival Nvidia.”
In a joint letter led by Elizabeth Warren and Senate Democratic Leader Charles E. Schumer on Friday, numerous Democratic senators criticized the Trump administration’s decision to allow the export of H200 chips to China as a “dangerous policy shift.”
The Democratic lawmakers stated in the letter, “China seeks to acquire Nvidia’s H200 chips to develop and deploy artificial intelligence systems, including for military and cyber warfare purposes.”
They pointed out that this decision was made shortly after the U.S. Department of Justice announced the dismantling of a network involved in smuggling H200 chips.
The letter emphasized, “The Department of Justice has confirmed that these advanced chips are the ‘bedrock’ of AI superiority and are critical for modern military applications.”
The lawmakers requested the Department of Commerce to provide explanations by December 19, 2025, regarding the decision-making process, whether there were measures to ensure preferential purchases by U.S. buyers, and whether there was inter-agency review within the government.
On the same day, Chairman Moolenaar of the House Special Committee on China also sent a letter to the Department of Commerce expressing strategic concerns about the shift in export policy.
Moolenaar questioned the claim that Huawei’s AI chip capabilities could match those of Nvidia. He argued that while Huawei’s products may perform well in single-server benchmark tests, they achieve similar results to Nvidia by connecting over five times the number of lower-function chips.
Moolenaar stressed, “As artificial intelligence continues to evolve, the engine driving progress will be aggregate computational power, not the theoretical efficiency of a single chip.”
He also noted that past export control measures have been effective, citing that the U.S. has accumulated about 75% of global AI computational power, demonstrating significant leadership in advanced computational power.
Furthermore, he mentioned that the key operational components (wafers) of Huawei’s flagship AI chip 910C are from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), and memory components are manufactured by Samsung and SK Hynix in South Korea.
Moolenaar pointed out that in contrast, Huawei’s subsequent chip design, 910D, produced by SMIC in China, has regressed in functionality. He believed this reflected that Chinese domestic wafer factories were unable to mass-produce chips comparable to 910C without assistance from foreign components.
Additionally, China’s top AI company, DeepSeek, currently relies on smuggled Nvidia chips to train its AI models.
Moolenaar expressed concerns that approving the sale of advanced chips to China could weaken the extraordinary strategic advantage gained during President Trump’s first term. He demanded Lutnick provide evidence and technical assessment bases for approving the export of H200 and present briefings on the aforementioned issues by January 15, 2026.
In addition to the letters mentioned above, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators proposed a bill on December 4 aiming to prevent the Trump administration from further relaxing export permits for advanced chips to China within 30 months.
The bill, known as the “Secure and Fair Export of Chips Act” (SAFE CHIPS Act), was co-sponsored by Republican Senator Pete Ricketts and Democratic Senator Chris Coons, with signatories including prominent China hawks like Senator Tom Cotton.
The bill would require the Department of Commerce to reject requests from buyers in China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea to acquire more advanced AI chips within 30 months. Following this, the Department of Commerce must submit briefings to Congress one month before any proposed regulatory changes take effect.
Previously, the Trump administration announced that it would allow Nvidia to sell H200 chips to China and other regions with “approved customers.” As a condition of approval, the U.S. government would receive a 25% share of the sales.
Trump stated that this move would help “support American jobs, strengthen American manufacturing, and benefit American taxpayers.” He also indicated that similar profit-sharing models could be applied to AMD, Intel, and other “great American companies.”
A spokesperson for Nvidia stated that providing H200 to vetted commercial customers balanced maintaining U.S. technological leadership while addressing concerns. The company warned that banning the sale of H200 would only allow foreign AI chip companies to significantly increase their market share.
Supporters of this action believe that allowing controlled export is a strategic risk.
Patrick Moorhead, founder of market research company Moor Insights & Strategy, stated in a CNBC interview that H200 belongs to an older generation of products, about two years old in terms of technology.
Moorhead said, “The performance of these chips is not sufficient to build the next generation’s cutting-edge models, and exporting this type of technology outside has a net positive effect for the United States.”
He further pointed out that allowing the sale of H200 benefits the U.S. in three ways:
First, it maintains China’s developers’ dependence on Nvidia’s CUDA ecosystem, a parallel computing framework that has become an industry standard for AI and high-performance computing (HPC). This “ecosystem lock” is seen as beneficial to the U.S. as a whole.
Second, it helps curb the global expansion of Huawei technology. Moorhead noted that allowing U.S. technology into the market helps contain the spread of Huawei technology.
Most importantly, it prevents the U.S. from withdrawing from the global market due to excessive restrictions. He suggested that if the U.S. does not export its technology, countries in regions such as South Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe may be forced to turn to Chinese suppliers.