A senior US trade official told Congress on July 14 that shipments of Nvidia's H200 AI chip to China have begun, though in very limited quantities. Jeffrey Kessler, under secretary of commerce for industry and security, testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee that there have been "minimal exports of any H200s to China so far," later describing the volume shipped as "trivial."
The H200 is Nvidia's second-most advanced AI processor, behind the newer Blackwell line. In May 2026, the Commerce Department cleared roughly ten Chinese firms — reportedly including Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance — to purchase the chip, but no deliveries had taken place at that time. Kessler's testimony marks the first confirmation that actual shipments have started moving. Separately, Reuters reported the same day that a unit of telecoms equipment maker ZTE Corp and two other Chinese companies had received US approval to buy advanced AI chips from both Nvidia and AMD.
Congressional pushback
Lawmakers on the committee pressed Kessler on two fronts:
- Rep. Gregory Meeks criticized the Commerce Department for not adding any Chinese companies to its export control blacklist since October, calling it the longest such gap in more than a decade.
- Rep. Bill Huizenga questioned Kessler about a separate loophole involving Nvidia's more advanced Blackwell chips, which he said may have allowed Chinese-owned subsidiaries operating outside China to obtain them through smuggling or gaps in the rules.
The exchange underscores the tension inside US policy: the administration has approved conditional sales of high-end chips to vetted Chinese buyers while simultaneously facing accusations from within Congress that enforcement has weakened. Sales of the H200 to China have become one of the clearest flashpoints in the broader US-China technology rivalry, with both sides watching closely how many chips actually cross the border versus how many licenses are merely approved on paper.
Source: Reuters