In a recorded interview broadcast Sunday on CBS, Trump said that only American customers should have access to the top-end Blackwell chips offered by Nvidia.
"We will not transfer the most advanced of them to anyone outside the United States. We will not give the chip (Blackwell) to anyone else," Reuters quoted Trump as saying.
These remarks suggest that Trump may impose stricter restrictions on the export of advanced chips than US officials have previously stated, not only for China, but also for the rest of the world.
In July, the Trump administration launched a new artificial intelligence plan aimed at easing environmental regulations and significantly expanding technology exports to allies in an attempt to maintain the US advantage over China in the field of AI. Just last week, Nvidia said it would ship more than 260,000 Blackwell AI chips to South Korea and some of the country's largest companies, including Samsung Electronics.
There have also been questions about whether Trump might allow a less sophisticated version of Blackwell's chips to be shipped to China, after he suggested he might approve exports. Trump told CBS that he would not allow the sale of the most advanced Blackwell chips to Chinese companies, but did not rule out the possibility that they could get a less productive version of the chip.
"We will let them deal with Nvidia, but not with the most advanced [version of the chip]," Trump said.
The possibility of selling any version of Blackwell chips to Chinese companies has attracted criticism from some officials in Washington, who fear that this technology could increase military capabilities and significantly accelerate the development of artificial intelligence in China.
Republican Congressman John Mulenaar, who heads the House Select Committee on China, said such a step "would be tantamount to providing Iran with military-grade uranium." Trump suggested that he could discuss this issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping before their summit in South Korea last week, but ultimately said that this topic was not raised.Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said last week that the company had not applied for a US export license for the Chinese market due to Beijing's position.