The head of Nvidia is potentially risking incurring the ire of US President Donald Trump, after he publicly criticised American chip export controls to China.

The Guardian reported that the founder and boss of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, told a tech forum on Wednesday that US chip exports controls have been a “failure”.

Successive US administrations have over the years implemented increasingly strict chip export controls on China, in an effort to curb China’s military advancement, and protect US dominance of chip design and the AI sector.

Export controls failure

These US export controls have especially impacted Nvidia, and it has been forced to throttle various chipsets in order to comply with the US restrictions.

Indeed in April 2025 Nvidia had warned that it would take $5.5 billion in charges after the US government limited exports of its H20 artificial intelligence chip to China.

And Nvidia’s share of China’s AI chip market had fallen from approximately 95 percent at the start of the Biden administration back in 2020, to 50 percent currently.

Speaking this week at the Computex tech forum in Taipei (Taiwan), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang reportedly said that the US export controls have spurred on Chinese developers.

“The local companies are very, very talented and very determined, and the export control gave them the spirit, the energy and the government support to accelerate their development,” Huang reportedly told journalists at the Computex tech show in Taipei.

“I think, all in all, the export control was a failure,” he was quoted by the Guardian as saying.

“China has a vibrant technology ecosystem, and it’s very important to realise that China has 50 percent of the world’s AI researchers, and China is incredibly good at software,” Huang said.

In April Jensen Huang had made a surprise visit to China, just days after the Trump Administration had issued fresh export restrictions for the only AI chip the American chip maker was still allowed to sell to China.

During his trip to Beijing, Huang had apparently alerted customers about his plans, despite his visit surprising many amid the trade war furore ignited by Trump’s so called Liberation Day” tariffs.

Earlier this month Nvidia confirmed earlier reports when it told customers it is preparing a July release for downgraded H20 AI chip with reduced memory capacity.

Previous administrations

Nvidia has been contending with US chip export restrictions for a while now.

Under the previous Biden Administration, the US had targeted China with two rounds of export controls in October 2022 and October 2023 that specifically limited the parameters of AI chips that US firms such as Nvidia could sell to Chinese buyers, forcing Nvidia to develop slower AI chips for the Chinese market.

Then Nvidia confirmed that its H20 AI chip, which was designed specifically for the Chinese market to comply with previous US export controls, would now require a special licence to sell in China for the “indefinite future”.

Nvidia’s promise of tweaking some of its AI chips make sense, as the chip giant sought to retain potential buyers, amid increasing reports of AI chip alternatives from Chinese firms.

Since 2023 there have been reports that Huawei, Tencent and other Chinese start-ups are increasingly seeking Nvidia alternatives.

For example, it was recently reported that Huawei is set to begin testing its next-generation Ascend 910D chip, which it sees as a challenger to Nvidia’s H100.

Then in early April, reports said Huawei was set to begin mass production of the Ascend 910C for domestic Chinese customers in May, as it taps into demand released by new US restrictions on Nvidia and AMD chips.

Trump pulls back

Last week, the US and China had agreed to suspend the punitive tariffs for 90 days, and the Trump administration rescinded some of the existing controls on chip sales to China.

But the Trump administration also unveiled fresh guidelines for other countries, warning companies that using Chinese-made hi-tech AI semiconductors, specifically tech company Huawei’s Ascend chips, could put them in breach of existing US export controls.

The Guardian noted that in response China accused the US of “abusing export controls to suppress and contain China”.

The commerce ministry said on Wednesday the warning was “typical unilateral bullying and protectionism, which seriously undermine the stability of the global semiconductor industry chain and supply chain”.

It also reportedly warned that “any organisation or individual that enforces or assists in enforcing such measures” could be in violation of Chinese law.