Nvidia’s rally did not last long. After surging on President Trump’s announcement that the company would be allowed to sell its H200 chips to China with 25% of proceeds routed to the US government, the stock turned lower on Tuesday morning. Nvidia $NVDA ( ▲ 3.74% ) dipped into the red after the Financial Times reported that Beijing is weighing ways to strictly limit access to the chip.
According to the FT, Chinese regulators have discussed allowing only tightly controlled H200 purchases. Buyers would need lengthy approvals and would be required to explain why domestic chips could not handle the workload. The H200 is Nvidia’s most powerful Hopper generation chip, since overtaken by Blackwell, and has been at the center of trade tensions throughout the year.
The latest twist highlights how familiar this story is for Nvidia. Earlier export restrictions blocked shipments of the H20, a scaled down version of Nvidia’s premium chips. Even after those rules were relaxed, demand in China barely returned. Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said after Q3 earnings that orders from the region “never materialized,” with reports indicating Beijing pushed its tech giants toward homegrown alternatives.
The hoped-for windfall from reopening sales now looks less certain. Bloomberg Intelligence analysts had estimated a potential ten to fifteen billion dollar revenue boost, but China’s lukewarm stance suggests a slower path ahead.
The politics are not aligned either. A bipartisan group of US senators opposes giving China access to advanced US chips. Chinese leadership does not want its tech champions leaning on Nvidia. President Trump and CEO Jensen Huang, meanwhile, are happy to re-open the channel if it brings in revenue.
Investors looking for a clean resolution to Nvidia’s China problem may need to keep waiting.