Selling H20 Chips to China Will Come at a Cost, with Liza Tobin

We interrupt our summer break to provide quick reactions to news this week that the Trump administration will begin allowing Nvidia and AMD to sell certain advanced semiconductors to China - so long as those companies agree to pay a commission fee to the U.S. government. While Emily is on vacation, Geoff is joined by CNAS Adjunct Senior Fellow and Managing Director of Garnaut Global Liza Tobin to dig into how we got to this point, if this arrangement is even legal, and what it means for the future of U.S.-China tech competition.

Matt Pottinger and Liza Tobin, “Trump Just Handed China the Tools to Beat America in AI”, The Free Press, August 11, 2025

Chris Miller, “China has its own concerns about Nvidia H20 chips”, Financial Times, August 11, 2025

Charles Rollet, “China's military tried to buy Nvidia chips for AI servers and a robot dog”, Business Insider, August 1, 2025