President Trump’s business delegation to China this week has been finalized, featuring over a dozen top executives from companies with significant operations in the country. But one conspicuous name is missing: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Given that Huang accompanied Trump on earlier trips to the Middle East and the UK, and last week called it a “great honor” to join this visit, his exclusion raises eyebrows.
The reason? The US-China AI chip negotiations are at a standstill. In December, Trump conditionally approved Nvidia’s sale of H200 chips to China (with a 25% government cut). Huang confirmed in March that Nvidia had received the green light and started production. But last month, the Commerce Department acknowledged that not a single H200 has reached China, because Beijing refuses to authorize domestic companies to buy them.
On the US side, political pressure is mounting. The House recently advanced the bipartisan AI Overwatch Act, which aims to block next-generation Blackwell chips from China entirely and tighten congressional scrutiny over H200 licenses.
By excluding Huang from the delegation, Washington is signaling Beijing that restrictions on top-tier AI chips won’t ease anytime soon. “The Trump administration knows computing power is the deciding factor in the US-China AI race,” says Ryan Fedasiuk of the American Enterprise Institute. “Right now, US chip giants really have nothing to negotiate with the Chinese government.”