On 8 December 2025, United States President Donald Trump announced a one-year waiver of export restrictions on Nvidia’s H200 chips, which are used in data centres for artificial intelligence (AI). Trump’s decision will give Chinese firms legal access to Nvidia’s Hopper chip line, its second-most advanced after Blackwell, marking a notable expansion in Washington’s willingness to permit advanced AI hardware to reach the markets of potential adversaries. The H200 decision followed another notable action, on 13 May, when the administration announced it would rescind former president Joe Biden’s ‘AI diffusion’ rules, which were poised to take effect that month. Those rules were announced in mid-January as Biden was preparing to leave office. The reasons for the Trump reversal were outlined in a document published by the US Department of Commerce, which argued that Biden’s rules ‘saddled companies with burdensome new regulatory requirements’ that would stifle American innovation and impede efforts by American companies to capture and grow their international market share.
The US pivot on regulating AI diffusion (IISS)
Related articles
