No company has cashed in on the generative AI boom quite like Nvidia, whose chips and software help power AI used by Microsoft, Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Tesla. So it’s no surprise that as President Trump moves to impose tariffs on semiconductors—after initially carving out an exemption—Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is looking to strike a deal to reduce the impact of potential tariffs on his company.
But his efforts so far have highlighted the mixed AI policy messages coming from the Trump administration. For example, after Huang attended a $1 million-a-head dinner at Mar-a-Lago last week, the White House supposedly paused plans to restrict the export of the company’s H20 chips, allowing their continued sale in China. The move surprised many in the chip industry who had expected the Trump administration to impose tighter controls instead, but by Tuesday afternoon the news had shifted once more: Nvidia said it will take a quarterly charge of about $5.5 billion tied to exporting H20 chips to China and other destinations, leading to a stock slide of 5% in extended trading.
