House China Committee Chair Warns Against Allowing Exports of Nvidia AI Chip to China

A Michigan Republican is urging the Department of Commerce to pause the resumption of H20 AI chip

The chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party is calling for a review of the U.S. government’s recent decision to allow Nvidia Corp. to resume sales of a chip to China.

On July 18, Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) sent a letter to Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick urging the department not to abandon strict export controls on the H20 graphics processing unit. In his letter, he warned that lifting the ban could advance the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) military AI capabilities and enable Chinese tech companies to capture global AI market share.

“The Commerce Department made the right call in banning the H20. Now it must hold the line,” Moolenaar said. “We can’t let the CCP use American chips to train AI models that will power its military, censor its people, and undercut American innovation.”

In April, the Department of Commerce barred Nvidia from exporting the H20 chip to China on national security grounds. In May, Nvidia executives said the decision to ban the chip—which was designed exclusively to conform with existing export barriers— would deny it access to the multibillion-dollar Chinese market.

In response, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang went as far as to publicly object to the Trump administration’s policy decision. In the company’s most recent earnings call, he told investors that the ban could backfire by effectively forcing Chinese chipmakers to improve their own production capabilities. In the same call, he vowed the company would not give up on the market and would continue to develop chips that could conform with controls.

On July 14, Nvidia formally announced it had applied for export licenses to resume H20 sales to Chinese customers. The following day, Lutnick confirmed that the United States would begin to resume H20 shipments to China as part of a trade deal with the regime.

Huang, during a visit to Beijing for the China International Supply Chain Expo, said on July 16 that he was reassured that export licenses would be granted quickly. He said that there was already significant demand for the chip.

The H20 chip, Moolenaar’s letter said, significantly outperforms domestically produced Chinese AI chips, especially in terms of high-bandwidth memory critical for AI. According to a report released by the House Select Committee on the CCP in April 2025, the H20 chips were instrumental in enabling DeepSeek’s AI reasoning model R1.

The letter expressed deep concern about the implications of the decision to resume exports. Along with DeepSeek, he said that Chinese tech company Tencent has allegedly used H20 GPUs to train massive AI models on computing clusters that qualify as “supercomputers” under U.S. law. This, he said, potentially violates existing export control regulations.

Moolenaar recommended that the Department of Commerce adopt a “floating technical benchmark” to ensure that export controls evolve alongside China’s advancing chip capabilities. This would maintain U.S. technological advantages while allowing for some regulated engagement in the Chinese market.

Furthermore, the letter requested a detailed briefing in front of the committee by the Commerce Department by Aug. 8. That hearing should cover policies regarding licensing for the H20 and similar chips, the rationale behind reversing the ban, measures to prevent unauthorized military use, and risk-mitigation steps, it said.

Nvidia is the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturer and currently the world’s most valuable publicly traded company in terms of market capitalization. Its next quarterly earnings report will be released on Aug. 27.

Representatives of Nvidia and the Department of Commerce did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.