White House Official: US Isn't ‘Opening the Floodgates’ for H200 Exports to China
Although the Trump administration plans to allow Nvidia H200 chips to be exported to China, a White House official stressed last week that those exports will be closely scrutinized and that the U.S. will continue to restrict exports of the most leading-edge American chips and technology. Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, also said he doesn’t believe the Bureau of Industry and Security needs any additional authorities from Congress to boost its export control implementation or enforcement powers.
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Kratsios told lawmakers that the administration continues to believe that its most advanced semiconductors, including those made by Nvidia, should be banned from export to China.
“It's very clear now that our top chips, our Blackwells, are not available to the [People’s Republic of China],” said Kratsios, referring to the advanced chip unveiled by Nvidia in 2024 (see 2512100030 and 2511030031). “The next set of chips that will be released by Nvidia this year, the Rubins, are also not available for the PRC.”
Speaking during a subcommittee hearing of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, Kratsios said the BIS rule issued this month on H200 exports shows the “important nuance and thoughtfulness” that the administration is taking on this subject (see 2601130073). That rule eases the BIS licensing review policy over H200 exports to China, but it also requires exporters to show that there's “sufficient supply” of those chips in the U.S., that the export will be subject to “rigorous” know-your-customer procedures, and more.
Kratsios also noted that exporters will face limits on how many of those types of chips can be exported to China. “We're not opening the floodgates for the PRC to purchase as many H200s as they want.”
The rule also prohibits exports that would be used by Chinese companies to build data centers overseas and compete with American hyperscalers, Kratsios said. “So if you're a large Chinese tech company, and you want to build a data center in Malaysia, you cannot buy H200s to do that,” he said. “You can only import those H200s for facilities in China.”
Rep. Bill Foster, D-Ill., questioned whether BIS will be able to enforce those prohibitions and other end-use restrictions on exported chips, including exports to countries in the Middle East. He specifically asked how BIS knows, for example, whether a chip exported for a drug development end use in Saudi Arabia is actually used for that purpose and not for developing bioweapons.
“You're saying that everything [the U.S. sells] into Saudi Arabia or wherever, that you will know the workflow of every one of those end users?” Foster said.
Kratsios replied: “We have visibility into the end users who apply for the export license.” He also said China and other countries already have access to the types of chips that can be used to work on weapons.
“I think generally, just zooming up a second, I think that the types of activities that both of us agree we should not be supporting or endorsing by our competitors or adversaries are ones that other existing chips that they already have access to are being used for and can be used for,” he said.
Rep. Scott Franklin, R-Fla., asked Kratsios how Congress can “refine” U.S. export control authorities and help BIS better enforce its existing regulations. He noted that the White House’s AI Action Plan (see 2507230028) calls on Krastios’ office, the Commerce Department and the National Security Council to “pursue creative approaches to export control enforcement.”
Kratsios called export controls a "very important tool in our toolkit." While he said he would defer to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and BIS, he added that he isn’t aware of any new authorities needed by BIS.
“I think to date, we have had the tools that we need in our toolkit to execute on what the president is trying to accomplish,” Kratsios said. “But it's certainly worth a conversation with that team.”
He made similar comments to Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga. “I broadly believe we have the tools that we need and the authorities we need at BIS to execute a very robust export control policy,” Kratsios said, “as seen by this pretty robust H200 rule" issued by BIS.
The AI Action Plan also notably directed U.S. agencies to explore using location-verification features to track exports of AI technology for compliance purposes. Rep. Sheri Biggs, R-S.C., asked Kratsios to provide some examples of location-tracking features for chips and to explain how Congress can “support” this effort, but Kratsios didn’t directly answer.
He said: “I think, generally, we want to create an export control environment that protects the sort of crown jewel technologies that drive AI development from getting in the hands of our competitors. It's something that Secretary Lutnick and the president and the administration have been very clear about. So the top-end Nvidia chips, for example, continue to be export-controlled, and it's something that we're going to continue to track very closely.”
Kratsios was also asked about the Biden administration’s 2022 decision to end the DOJ’s China initiative, an effort launched during the first Trump administration aimed at finding and prosecuting potential Chinese spies looking to illegally acquire sensitive American research and technology. Critics of the program said it fueled discrimination and bias against researchers and academics of Chinese descent.
The decision to end the program was “damaging,” Kratsios said. He also noted that the Pentagon issued a memo earlier this month designed to tighten controls around fundamental research to better shield that research from "malign" foreign influence and intellectual property theft, including from China (see 2601090063).
“I think it's important that we remain vigilant in monitoring, tracking and setting up the right safeguards to protect our research ecosystem,” Kratsios said. “There are broader efforts across the administration to make sure that all the great work that we do using government-funded dollars to create the next great technologies that are going to be powering this country are protected from bad actors.”
Kratsios also spoke about the administration’s upcoming AI export program, which the government hopes will boost exports of the full stack of American AI technologies around the world (see 2512150024). He said the U.S. is at a “very important, singular moment in time,” when American companies make the world’s best AI chips, models and AI applications, and the country needs to take advantage by spreading that technology to other nations.
“Because we have the best stack in the world, everyone wants it, and we should be doing everything we possibly can to get that stack in the hands of our partners and allies,” he said.
He said this strategy is a departure from the Biden administration, referring to its AI diffusion rule, which was set to create new, worldwide license requirements for exports of advanced AI chips before the Trump administration announced plans to rescind the rule last year (see 2505130018). Kratsios called the AI diffusion rule “disastrous.”
“We believe we have this window in time where we can make the American AI stack the dominant stack globally,” he said, “and we're racing ahead to achieve that.”