US Senators Introduce Bill to Prevent Export of Nvidia’s Advanced Chips to China

‘Denying Beijing access to these AI chips is essential to our national security,’ Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) said.

Nvidia's GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip is displayed at the company's GTC conference in San Jose, Calif., on March 19, 2025. Max A. Cherney/Reuters

A bipartisan group of senators on Dec. 4 introduced a bill to codify existing U.S. restrictions on exports of Nvidia’s advanced AI chips to China and other countries designated as foreign adversaries.

If passed, the Secure and Feasible Exports (SAFE) of Chips Act, introduced by Sens. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.), would require the Department of Commerce to deny export license applications to foreign adversary nations, such as China, North Korea, Russia, and Iran, for at least 30 months, according to Ricketts’s office.

The department would be required to publish any proposed changes to the bill in the Federal Register and brief Congress 30 days before any changes take effect, his office stated.

The proposed legislation would apply to “advanced integrated circuits” with performance levels higher than those already approved for export to foreign adversary countries, according to the statement.

“Denying Beijing access to these AI chips is essential to our national security. Codifying President Trump’s current AI chip limitations on Communist China secures this goal,” Ricketts said.

Coons said the SAFE Chips Act seeks to safeguard the U.S. lead in computing power, ensuring that the world’s most advanced AI models are developed domestically by American companies.

“As China races to close our lead in AI, we cannot give them the technological keys to our future through advanced semiconductor chips,” the senator stated.

Other co-sponsors of the bill include Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Dave McCormick (R-Pa.), and Andy Kim (D-N.J.).

When asked for comment on the proposed bill, an Nvidia spokesperson emphasized that the company’s computing products “are not weapons, arms, or atomic bombs.”

“As the president’s AI Action plan wisely recognizes, nonmilitary businesses everywhere should be able to choose the American technology stack, promoting U.S. jobs and promoting national security,” the spokesperson said in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times.

The bipartisan bill came just a day after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang met with President Donald Trump to discuss export control issues.

Speaking to reporters at the White House on Dec. 3, Trump said Huang “knows very well” his stance regarding U.S. chip exports to China.

The president has said he would not allow China or any other country to have access to Nvidia’s most powerful chips, particularly the company’s flagship Blackwell chips.

An Nvidia Blackwell GPU is displayed at COMPUTEX in Taipei, Taiwan, on June 4, 2024. Ann Wang/Reteurs

“We will not let anybody have them other than the United States,” Trump said in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” that aired on Nov. 2.

Huang said on Oct. 31 that he was hoping Nvidia would be able to sell its Blackwell chips, its latest generation of AI chips, in China at some point, although there are no plans to do so at the moment.

The Trump administration in April imposed export controls on Nvidia’s H20 chips—which the company designed to comply with the former Biden administration’s restrictions on advanced AI chip exports to China—though the company was later given assurances of approval.

In August, a Chinese state-affiliated social media account urged companies to avoid buying Nvidia’s H20 chips over an alleged backdoor feature. An Nvidia spokesperson denied the claims at the time.

In July, the Trump administration recommended strengthening export controls to verify the location of advanced AI chips, as part of wider efforts to ensure they do not find their way into the hands of foreign adversaries such as China.

The White House revealed the recommendations in “America’s AI Action Plan.” It recommended that the Department of Commerce (DOC), the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the National Security Council, in collaboration with industry, explore “leveraging new and existing location verification features on advanced AI compute to ensure that the chips are not in countries of concern.”

Emel Akan contributed to this report.