White House AI adviser David Sacks on Tuesday defended the decision by the administration of US President Donald Trump to allow Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc to resume sales of some artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China, reversing export curbs imposed by the US earlier this year.
Allowing Nvidia to restart shipments of its H20 chips would position the US to compete more effectively abroad and blunt efforts by Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies Co (華為) to gain a bigger slice of the global market, Sacks said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.
“We are not selling the latest and greatest chips to China, but we can deprive Huawei of having this giant market share in China that they can then use to scale up and compete globally,” he said. “The policy is nuanced and it makes a lot of sense.“
Photo: AFP
The move is seen as a win for Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), who last week met with Trump after spending months arguing for a letup in US restrictions on sales to Chinese customers.
“Jensen has been making the case publicly for competing in China and there are a lot of merits to the argument,” Sacks said.
Revived sales of the H20 promise to restore billions in revenue for Nvidia this year, according to the company.
The H20 was originally designed to comply with export controls imposed under the administration of former US president Joe Biden, but in April, the Trump administration tightened those rules to block sales to China of the H20 and AMD’s MI308 chip without a license.
The tighter curbs prompted Nvidia to announce a US$4.5 billion writedown on H20 chip inventory in its fiscal first quarter and warn of an additional potential loss of US$8 billion in sales.
AMD said it would take an US$800 million charge for its second quarter of this year.
Sacks pushed back on criticism that allowing H20 sales to China poses a security risk, calling the H20 “a deprecated chip.”
He warned that other countries are choosing between US and Chinese technology.
“If you don’t let these countries buy American tech, you’re pushing them into China’s arms,” he said.
Trump officials had previously said that the H20 chip sales curbs were not up for negotiation.
Sacks said that the policy shift fits into what he described as a broader push to establish an “American AI stack” — encompassing chips, operating systems and the AI models that run on them.
“It’s a zero-sum game,” he said. “We want it all to be American-made and American-powered. If we hobble our own companies, we’re handing an advantage to China.”
The reversal follows months of diplomacy between Washington and Beijing. As part of a trade truce unveiled last month, the US has eased some restrictions on exports, including chip-design software, in exchange for greater Chinese cooperation on sales of rare earth minerals — a key input for many high-tech products.
SETBACK: Apple’s India iPhone push has been disrupted after Foxconn recalled hundreds of Chinese engineers, amid Beijing’s attempts to curb tech transfers Apple Inc assembly partner Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known internationally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has recalled about 300 Chinese engineers from a factory in India, the latest setback for the iPhone maker’s push to rapidly expand in the country. The extraction of Chinese workers from the factory of Yuzhan Technology (India) Private Ltd, a Hon Hai component unit, in southern Tamil Nadu state, is the second such move in a few months. The company has started flying in Taiwanese engineers to replace staff leaving, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named, as the
The prices of gasoline and diesel at domestic fuel stations are to rise NT$0.1 and NT$0.4 per liter this week respectively, after international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to rise to NT$27.3, NT$28.8 and NT$30.8 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to rise to NT$26.2 per liter at CPC stations and NT$26 at Formosa pumps, they said. The announcements came after international crude oil prices
DOLLAR SIGNS: The central bank rejected claims that the NT dollar had appreciated 10 percentage points more than the yen or the won against the greenback The New Taiwan dollar yesterday fell for a sixth day to its weakest level in three months, driven by equity-related outflows and reactions to an economics official’s exchange rate remarks. The NT dollar slid NT$0.197, or 0.65 percent, to close at NT$30.505 per US dollar, central bank data showed. The local currency has depreciated 1.97 percent so far this month, ranking as the weakest performer among Asian currencies. Dealers attributed the retreat to foreign investors wiring capital gains and dividends abroad after taking profit in local shares. They also pointed to reports that Washington might consider taking equity stakes in chipmakers, including Taiwan Semiconductor
STABLE DEMAND: Delta supplies US clients in the aerospace, defense and machinery segments, and expects second-half sales to be similar to the first half Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) expects its US automation business to remain steady in the second half, with no signs of weakening client demand. With demand from US clients remaining solid, its performance in the second half is expected to be similar to that of the first half, Andy Liu (劉佳容), general manager of the company’s industrial automation business group, said on the sidelines of the Taiwan Automation Intelligence and Robot Show in Taipei on Wednesday. The company earlier reported that revenue from its automation business grew 7 percent year-on-year to NT$27.22 billion (US$889.98 million) in the first half, accounting for 11 percent
RSS