In today’s economy, one of the surest pathways to great wealth is to own a platform or tool that many others use.
Since the rise of the internet three decades ago, American companies have held a dominant position in the global digital economy. Yet, as we transition into the age of artificial intelligence, the leadership tables are being reset.
Donald Trump is arguably the most consequential U.S. president in decades. Two key lines of action have focused on wealth creation for the United States and the maintenance of its technological leadership globally. In pursuing these objectives, Donald Trump has been unafraid to depart from long-held orthodoxy.
In past decades, when dramatic new technologies have emerged, powerful segments of official Washington have sought to bottle them up with export controls. Nvidia’s advanced chips are but the latest example.
The debate about the dissemination of new technologies is tied up with a strategic discussion about dealing with America’s 21st Century geopolitical rival: China. Of course, debates about great power competition go back at least 2500 years to Athens and Sparta.
Nevertheless, the underlying conditions of the U.S.-China relationship are very different from past rivalries. The two countries are simultaneously strategic competitors, economically interdependent and technologically intertwined.
When in 2025 the Trump Administration supported the export of Nvidia’s advanced chips to China, many, including the U.S. Senate fought them.
Was the Trump Administration being naïve? Not at all. In fact, President Trump understands the dynamics of American technological dominance better than most in politics.
First, advanced technology is exceedingly valuable. Allowing the sale of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China would generate vast new exports. The company has estimated that the Chinese market could be worth $50 billion per year.
Importantly, the Administration is requiring the payment to the U.S. Government of a 25% fee on each chip exported. Public estimates suggest that the H200 retails for $30,000-$40,000 per chip, putting the prospective annual revenue for the government in the billions of dollars.
Second, America has seen the benefits over many years of supplying the tech stack of other countries. Key elements of the stack, including network infrastructure, platforms, standards, software, security tools, and payment systems, are each valuable.
Taken together, the U.S. gains substantial recurring revenue, visibility into networks, and an ability to shape their future evolution. By supplying advanced H200 chips, a U.S. company could provide the backbone of China’s AI tech stack. One could fairly ask: why would the U.S. not want China’s tech stack to be rooted in advanced American technology?
Nevertheless, international relations, like politics, is a brutal game.
Nvidia has been in China for years and built itself into a major supplier of chips to marquee Chinese companies, including Tencent, ByteDance, and Alibaba. When the Biden Administration introduced export controls on chip exports in 2022, Nvidia made custom China-compliant chips in hopes of keeping the market.
While demand for Nvidia’s advanced chips remained strong, China began to push hard for the creation of domestic substitutes. Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s CEO, was correct in arguing that the Biden Administration’s export controls “backfired.”
When, in 2025, President Trump made the decision to allow sales to China of H200 chips, he sought to help Nvidia (and America) to reestablish its market leadership position. In doing so, he directly challenged the views of the China hawks in Congress and the national security establishment.
These superior chips now being available for sale, but China has heretofore prevented its companies from buying them. Nevertheless, having invested significant political capital, the President must make this gambit succeed.
The May 14-15, 2026 summit between President Trump and President Xi offers a significant opportunity to do so.
For China, like the United States, many issues are negotiable. In their November 2025 agreement, China agreed to resume supplies to America of critical minerals and purchases of U.S. agricultural products in exchange for tariff reductions and carveouts.
This time, securing Chinese chip purchases should be the top priority. Doing so would correct the errors of the Biden Administration, restore U.S. international leadership in advanced chips, and generate significant revenue for the industry and the U.S. Government. Arguably, no other product can deliver as much and as fast for the President and for the United States as advanced chip exports.
As the president’s team pursues this achievable, high impact objective, one must consider the bigger policy lessons. Going forward, policymakers should proceed with caution about labeling broadly applicable technologies as “dual use” and be more rigorous in understanding the longer-term impacts of a ban.
America should never again have to “pay” to sell a world-class product to a customer who would have previously jumped at the opportunity to buy it.
