Senators Move to Block Nvidia From Selling Top AI Chips to China with New SAFE CHIPS Act

A bipartisan coalition of U.S. Senators has introduced legislation designed to freeze the sale of Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence chips to China, setting up a direct confrontation with the White House over the future of American tech exports.

The new bill, dubbed the Secure and Feasible Exports (SAFE) CHIPS Act, was unveiled on Thursday by Senators Pete Ricketts (R-NE) and Chris Coons (D-DE). If passed, the law would compel the Commerce Department to block export licenses for cutting-edge AI hardware—specifically targeting Nvidia's H200 and Blackwell series chips—to China for a period of at least 30 months.


A Bipartisan Crackdown
The legislation comes amidst reports that the Trump administration is considering loosening existing export controls to allow Nvidia to sell its powerful H200 processors to Chinese customers. Lawmakers argue that such a move would disastrously undermine U.S. national security by fueling the military modernization of a strategic rival.

"Codifying limitations on Communist China... will allow us to widen our compute lead exponentially," Senator Ricketts stated.

The bill has garnered significant support from both sides of the aisle, with co-sponsors including Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR), Dave McCormick (R-PA), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), and Andy Kim (D-NJ). The act would extend the export ban to include not just China, but also Russia, Iran, and North Korea.


Closing the "Downgrade" Loophole
A key target of the legislation is the practice of selling "downgraded" chips. For the past year, Nvidia has successfully sold the H20, a chip specifically designed to fall just below the performance thresholds set by previous U.S. sanctions.

Senators argue that these chips, while individually less powerful, can be clustered together to train advanced AI models, effectively defeating the purpose of the sanctions. The SAFE CHIPS Act would strip away the Commerce Department's discretion to approve these sales, closing the loophole entirely for the next two and a half years.

Nvidia's Lobbying Blitz
The legislative push coincides with an intensifying lobbying effort by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. On Wednesday, Huang met with President Trump and Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill to argue against stricter controls.


Huang’s position is that blanket bans do not slow China’s progress but simply hand the massive Chinese market to local competitors like Huawei. "We can't degrade the chips that we sell to China. They won't accept that," Huang reportedly told lawmakers, arguing that U.S. companies must be allowed to compete globally to fund their own R&D.

However, the introduction of the SAFE CHIPS Act suggests that Congress remains unconvinced, viewing the short-term profits of American chipmakers as secondary to the long-term risk of arming an adversary with the world's most powerful intelligence tools.