The U.S. House of Representative on Wednesday rejected a new measure that would require suppliers of popular AI GPUs — such as AMD or Nvidia — to prioritize shipments of advanced processors to domestic companies over adversary nations like China, reports Bloomberg citing source familiar with the defense policy bill that the House was considering on Wednesday. The proposal was sidelined after Nvidia's chief executive met President Trump and U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday.
If the information is accurate, it represents a policy win for Nvidia as the regulation would have reshaped how advanced accelerators reach China and other sanctioned markets. Yet, keeping in mind China's self-inflicted ban on Nvidia hardware, this is hardly a big deal for now.
The sidelined proposal — known as the Guaranteeing Access and Innovation for National Artificial Intelligence Act of 2025 (GAIN AI Act) — would have mandated suppliers like AMD or Nvidia to prioritize American customers ahead of buyers in China and other arms-restricted countries. The mechanism was straightforward: to get an export license to ship a batch of advanced products to China or other countries, Nvidia and AMD would need to confirm the following:
U.S. customers did not want those products.
There was no backlog of pending U.S. orders.
The export would not cause shipment delays to domestic customers.
The shipment would not harm American companies operating in other countries.
Supporters tried to attach the proposal to the annual defense bill — a package that usually passes with few obstacles — that is expected to be published on Friday. However, a person familiar with the bill told Bloomberg the GAIN AI proposal is not in the current draft, although it could still be added at the last minute.
Nvidia argued that the rule would erode U.S. competitiveness rather than secure domestic supply, and argued there was no evidence that American buyers could not get high-end AI silicon on time. This is technically true, as Chinese buyers can only get cut-down versions of Nvidia's Hopper (H20) processors, whereas American clients can get either full-fat Hopper H100 or H200, or the latest Blackwell GPUs.
On Wednesday, Donald Trump held talks in Washington with Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang about U.S. export curbs on advanced AI accelerators, according to a source cited by Reuters. Huang spent the day also meeting members of Congress, where he argued that different AI-related regulations in different states would hold back AI progress.
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