Trump heads to China amid Nvidia scandal: Will he get tougher on Beijing?

The trip comes as Jensen Huang, Nvidia's outgoing chief executive and one of Trump's closest allies in Silicon Valley, faces mounting scrutiny over his relationship with Alice Huang, a former Megaspeed executive whom US officials suspect of working for Chinese intelligence. China has denied the allegations.

On Thursday, Nvidia announced that Huang would step down as chief executive. Huang accompanied Trump on his May visit to Beijing, where his presence mattered for Nvidia, which has struggled to secure approval to sell its H200 AI chips in China. Now, his place in the next delegation is in doubt.

Huang's influence on chip policy

As founder and CEO of Nvidia, Huang pushed Washington to ease restrictions on the sale of advanced chips to China, arguing that wider use of US technology would help Washington hold onto its lead in AI development. In December 2025, Trump did approve sales of the H200, Nvidia's second-most powerful chip, to China, with 25 percent of proceeds to be paid to the US government.

He did so despite opposition from China hawks in both parties. Huang was a surprise late addition to Trump's delegation to Beijing in May, in hopes of unlocking stalled H200 sales. Despite Trump's decision to allow the sales, shipments were low because of slow import approvals from the Chinese government in a bid to support domestic chipmakers.

Will Trump change stance?

Not immediately. Huang's removal from Nvidia's board and the scandal leading up to that are unlikely to significantly affect relations between Washington and Beijing, which Steve Okun, a Singapore-based geopolitical analyst, told Al Jazeera is "a stalemate at best".

Instead, if the US continues to impose restrictions on AI product sales to China, AI diversion and diffusion would be much more likely to cause tension between the two nations. Gabriel Wildau, managing director at the advisory firm Teneo, told Al Jazeera that Trump "shows no sign that he intends to disrupt the current US-China rapprochement".

But he warned that the president "may face new pressure from Congress and hawkish voices inside his administration". Carsten Holz, an expert on the Chinese economy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said Trump "would not seem to have a coherent China policy and therefore his position in the upcoming talks in Shenzhen is hard to predict".

Pressure from Congress

Mostly from Congress, where control of both houses will pass to the Democrats in January. Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at the technology research group Omdia, said a tough US line on AI and China was not Trump's alone, calling it "one of the rare political consensuses domestically across the aisle".

Trump, he said, "will do whatever he can to protect his contribution and legacy on this matter". On Wednesday, Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Coons asked Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House chief of staff Stephen Miller to preserve all records on Nvidia's chip exports to China.

"This incident raises significant concerns about the federal government's ability to effectively enforce our export controls and protect our national security," the senators wrote. The news website Axios reported that Lutnick had held up a planned crackdown on firms suspected of funnelling Nvidia chips to China.

China's response

Beijing has rejected the spy claims and accused Washington of using them as cover to impose stronger restrictions and semiconductor export controls on China. "The US side should stop fabricating such 'spy' narratives as a pretext for imposing a technological blockade," Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Mao Ning said on Thursday.

But Mao also said China is willing to work with the US to implement the consensus reached by the two leaders. Omdia's Su said China "has no interest in not engaging with Trump, given substantial interest in Nvidia graphics processing units".

Chinese chipmakers may also gain from better access to US technology. Shares in Moore Threads, MetaX and Cambricon, China's leading makers of graphics processors, jumped nearly 10 percent on Thursday.

What happens after Shenzhen

Holz noted that the use of advanced Nvidia chips in Singapore data centres to serve customers in mainland China was "not new information". Still, Okun expects the pressure to build next year.

He said Congress could pass the Remote Access Security Act, aimed at stopping Chinese firms from reaching advanced chips through the cloud. The Department of Commerce could put export controls on Megaspeed or require licences for advanced chips sent to countries such as Singapore and Malaysia.

If that happens, it will strain the US-China relationship in 2027, he said, adding "but that's not going to happen next week".