Trump Meets Nvidia CEO, Vows to Slap Tariffs on Chips

President Donald Trump met with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on the afternoon of Jan. 31, following reports that the administration is looking for new ways to restrict artificial intelligence (AI) chip sales in China.

The meeting marked the first between the two since Trump took office.

Trump, in a press briefing two hours later, called Huang “a great gentleman” and said they had a “good meeting.”

“I can’t say what’s going to happen,” he told reporters.

Trump also said tariffs are in store for chips, pharmaceuticals, medicine, steel, aluminum, and copper, as well as against the European Union.

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Nvidia told The Epoch Times that Huang “appreciated the opportunity to meet with President Trump and discuss semiconductors and AI policy.” Huang and the president “discussed the importance of strengthening U.S. technology and AI leadership,” a spokesperson said.

Some lawmakers have urged for curbs on Nvidia chip exports to China in the wake of the DeepSeek shock.

Reps. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), the top members on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, said such a move is necessary as the State and Commerce Departments conduct a review of U.S. export control “in light of developments involving strategic adversaries” under Trump’s recent executive order.

The DeepSeek’s AI model relied on some 2,000 Nvidia H800 chips during the training, according to a paper published by the Chinese company’s researchers in December 2024. Those chips were a less powerful version of Nvidia’s H100 flagship chips, which Nvidia designed for China in compliance with 2022 export rules. Liang Wenfeng, founder of DeepSeek, told Chinese media in 2023 that the company had stockpiled Nvidia’s A100 chips, which Washington also barred from export to China in 2000.

The Commerce Department didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The chips Nvidia currently supplies to China are H20, which the company came out with last year to meet the existing U.S. export regulations on China. The chips can be used to run AI software.

But Moolenaar and Krishnamoorthi have suggested that Chinese companies may have a way to smuggle AI chips through third countries such as Singapore, which represents more than one-fifth of Nvidia’s revenue in its latest quarterly statement. In a letter to national security adviser Mike Waltz, they noted that many such shipments ultimately went to users outside of Singapore.

An Nvidia spokesperson said that the Singapore-related revenue “does not indicate diversion to China.”

“Our public filings report ‘bill to’ not ‘ship to’ locations of our customers,” the spokesperson told The Epoch Times. “Many of our customers have business entities in Singapore and use those entities for products destined for the U.S. and the west. We insist that our partners comply with all applicable laws, and if we receive any information to the contrary, act accordingly.”

While top tech CEOs such as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai, attended Trump’s inauguration, Huang spent the day in Beijing. He joined a Chinese New Year celebration at a local Nvidia subsidiary.