Trump's brokerage accounts bought millions of dollars of Nvidia shares early this year, after he was warned about its chief executive's ties to a suspected Chinese agent and before his government cleared Chinese buyers for its chips.
Trump announced on 8 December 2025 that Nvidia could sell its H200 processor to approved Chinese customers, in return for a 25 per cent cut collected as a tariff. His accounts bought between US$500,000 and US$1 million of Nvidia stock on 6 January, a week before the Commerce Department formalised the licensing rules, according to his disclosure for the first quarter. They bought between US$1 million and US$5 million on 10 February. The department cleared about 10 Chinese companies to buy the chips in May, during a state visit to China that Jensen Huang joined.
Trump had been told in late autumn 2025 that U.S. intelligence agencies suspected Alice Huang, a Megaspeed executive close to Jensen Huang, of working for China, and chose not to act, according to people familiar with the decision. They said he was partly wary of disrupting Nvidia's sales and trade with China. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, briefed him a second time before Jensen Huang boarded Air Force One for the May trip. Nvidia had committed US$25 million to Trump's White House ballroom.
The Trump Organization has said the president's holdings sit in fully discretionary accounts run by third-party financial institutions with sole authority over all trades, and that neither he nor his family receives advance notice of them. Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, said the accounts are invested through computer-based model portfolios and that neither Trump nor his family influences when shares are bought or sold. The White House has said there are no conflicts of interest. The disclosures do not show who chose each trade or why.
Presidents are exempt from the criminal conflict-of-interest statute, 18 U.S.C. section 208, which bars other executive branch officials from acting on matters in which they hold a financial interest, the Office of Government Ethics has advised. The office has recommended as a matter of policy that presidents behave as if they were bound by it. Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush, said of Trump's trading: "If he were defense secretary, he would be committing a crime."
Purchases, sales and decisions
Jensen Huang attended a US$1 million-a-head fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago in early April 2025. The White House then put on hold planned restrictions on Nvidia's H20 chip, according to two people familiar with the plan, after Nvidia promised to invest in U.S. data centres. It is not known whether he spoke to Trump at the event. Nvidia said on 15 April that H20 exports to China would require a licence after all.
The Commerce Department announced on 13 May 2025 that it would rescind the Biden administration's AI diffusion rule, two days before companies had to comply with it. The rule would have required licences for advanced chip exports to most countries. Jeffrey Kessler, the Commerce under-secretary for industry and security, told enforcement officials not to enforce it while a replacement was drafted.
Nvidia's support for the ballroom became public in October 2025, when Jensen Huang said the company was contributing "in a small way". The company committed US$25 million, the largest amount given, and asked not to be named among the donors the White House listed, according to an internal fundraising spreadsheet. John Rizzo, an Nvidia spokesman, said the support was independent of any business interests.
Trump's first-quarter disclosure lists 15 Nvidia transactions, by the count of Representative Don Beyer, a Virginia Democrat. Over the quarter the accounts bought between US$2 million and US$7 million of Nvidia shares and sold at least US$1.8 million. The purchases on 6 January and 10 February came after the first intelligence briefing and the H200 announcement. The 6 January purchase preceded the Commerce Department's licensing rules by a week.
Trump signed the disclosure on 8 May, four days before the state visit, and the ethics office released it on 14 May. He received the second briefing about Jensen Huang's relationship before Jensen Huang joined the delegation on 12 May. The Commerce Department cleared Chinese buyers for the H200 during the visit.
In July the accounts sold about US$1 million of Nvidia shares in two transactions and bought a similar amount. One sale, of between US$500,000 and US$1 million, was made on 20 July alongside sales of Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle and Costco shares.
Trump's August filing, signed on 17 September, records Nvidia purchases on 3 August and 17 August, a sale of between US$500,001 and US$1 million on 21 August and a purchase on 26 August. The 21 August sale was one of at least 24 that day, alongside sales of AMD, Broadcom, Micron, Intel and Qualcomm shares and at least 21 purchases. Over the month the accounts bought as much as US$1.6 million and sold as much as US$1 million of Nvidia, according to an analysis of the filing.
Jensen Huang received the National Medal of Science from Trump on 8 October, the day the August disclosure was released. Reports that U.S. officials suspected Alice Huang of spying became public on 29 October. Trump said on 9 November that he had asked Jensen Huang whether he knew she was a spy, had been told he did not, and believed him. Jensen Huang resigned on 11 November.
Who controls the accounts
Ingle has cited automated model portfolios, while the Trump Organization cites independent institutions with exclusive authority over the trades. The White House has also said the assets are held in a trust managed by his children, and Eric Trump wrote on 15 May that the family's assets were in "a blind trust" invested in broad market indexes. Beyer said the claim was false, citing the individual trades listed in the disclosures.
Trump's disclosures do not name the institutions that manage the accounts or identify who at them directed the Nvidia trades. Trump does not hold the assets in a qualified blind trust, the arrangement under which an official cannot see or direct holdings. He signs each periodic transaction report and attests to its contents, so the Nvidia trades appear on documents bearing his signature.
Ethics rules and disclosure
Under the STOCK Act, which applies to the president, Trump must report stock transactions within 45 days, and the ethics office has said its ban on using nonpublic information for private profit also covers him. Trump missed the deadline on a separate set of Microsoft and Amazon trades worth tens of millions of dollars and paid a US$200 late fee. The White House Management Office warned staff on 24 March that trading on nonpublic information was a criminal offence.
Government ethics officials have told Congress that their office cannot discipline a president and that its involvement in presidential ethics has significant limits. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts criticised the trades in May, citing the Nvidia purchase made before the chip sales to China were cleared. In August she and Representative Robert Garcia of California wrote to Trump asking him to explain more than 21,000 trades made in his name in 2025 and about 3,500 in the first quarter of 2026. Their letter singled out 15 trades, among them purchases of Nvidia and AMD shares on 6 January.
White House officials have not said whether Trump's accounts held Nvidia shares when he announced the H200 decision on 8 December, or which institution placed the 6 January and 10 February purchases. They have not said whether anyone reviewed the holdings against the H200 decisions, or whether the managers were told to stop trading Nvidia after either intelligence briefing. Nor have they said whether the accounts traded Nvidia after the intelligence reports became public on 29 October. Transactions from that period must be disclosed within 45 days.
What Congress has proposed
John Thune, the Senate majority leader, said on 12 November that there was a "high probability" Congress would impose further restrictions on chip exports. Mike Johnson, the House speaker, and Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, both favour strengthening the controls. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, called on 10 November for passage of three bills already in the Senate version of the defence authorisation bill. "He's supposed to protect America, not China, not his friends," Schumer said.
The AI Overwatch Act, introduced by Brian Mast, the Florida Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, would amend the Export Control Reform Act of 2018. The Commerce Department would have to send Congress each licence for advanced chips to a country of concern at least 30 days before approving it. Congress could block it by joint resolution within that window, the procedure used for large arms sales. The bill would also revoke existing licences until the administration submits a national security strategy on AI exports. The committee approved it 42 to 2 in January over objections from David Sacks, the White House adviser on AI.
Tom Cotton of Arkansas sponsors the Chip Security Act in the Senate. It would require location-verification mechanisms on export-controlled chips within 180 days of becoming law, so exporters and regulators can detect chips that reach somewhere other than their licensed destination. The House committee passed it 42 to 0 in March. The MATCH Act would require U.S. allies to match U.S. restrictions on selling chipmaking equipment to China, and would direct the Commerce Department to impose its own controls if they do not.
Senate negotiators added all three to the manager's amendment of the defence bill in July, according to Americans for Responsible Innovation, a group that lobbied for them. The Senate bill failed a procedural vote on 14 July and is awaiting floor action. Gregory Meeks of New York, the senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has objected to the Senate text of the AI Overwatch Act, so the two chambers' versions still have to be reconciled.
Senators Pete Ricketts, a Nebraska Republican, and Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, introduced the SAFE Chips Act in December 2025. It would require the Commerce Department to deny licences for advanced AI chips to China, Russia, Iran and North Korea for 30 months, and is not in the defence bill. The Information Technology Industry Council, which represents the largest U.S. technology companies, has argued that the bills would undermine the U.S. technology stack. Anthropic has publicly backed the three bills in the defence bill, and Nvidia lobbied against them.
Whether Congress can bind the president
Export licensing rests on authority Congress delegated to the executive in the 2018 act, and Congress can narrow that authority by passing a new law. Each of the bills would do so only once enacted, which requires Trump's signature or a two-thirds vote in both chambers to override a veto. Under the AI Overwatch Act's review procedure, a joint resolution blocking a licence would itself be subject to presidential veto. The committee votes, 42 to 2 and 42 to 0, exceeded two-thirds, but neither chamber has voted on the bills as a whole.
The GAIN AI Act, which would have required chipmakers to offer controlled chips to U.S. buyers before selling them abroad, passed the Senate in October 2025 as part of that year's defence bill. Sacks and the White House Office of Legislative Affairs then pressed lawmakers to drop it, and it was removed from the final text in December. Nvidia lobbied against it.
The current Congress ends on 3 January 2027, and bills not enacted by then lapse and must be reintroduced. The three chip measures can become law this year only if the House and Senate agree a final defence bill in the session that began after the November elections and Trump signs it, or both chambers override a veto. Democrats will control both chambers in the new Congress.
The Commerce Department is separately finalising a rule that would treat Chinese companies' use of controlled chips in foreign data centres as an export. It would cover Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil, Norway and South Africa, two people familiar with the process said. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, had been a leading opponent of the measure. A lawyer at Baker McKenzie has said the department lacks statutory authority to regulate remote access to computing. The House passed the Remote Access Security Act, which would grant that authority, by 369 votes to 22 in January. The Senate has not taken it up.
The administration and Nvidia
Kessler told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on 14 July that shipments under the H200 licences had been trivial. The Chinese government has told its technology companies to limit their use of Nvidia chips to operations abroad. Jensen Huang, who argued that cutting China off pushed Chinese companies to build rival chips, said in October 2025 that Nvidia's share of China's market for AI data centre chips had fallen from 95 per cent to zero. The White House has not said whether his resignation alters its approach to chip sales.
The Commerce Department has not added Megaspeed, the Singapore company Alice Huang ran in 2023, to the Entity List, its trade blacklist, despite proposals from the Pentagon and the State, Energy and Treasury departments. The department has not added any company to the list in more than a year, the longest such gap in 18 years. Its own investigation into Megaspeed stalled after Tim Teter, Nvidia's general counsel, contacted the agents in August 2025, and the case was transferred to the Justice Department.
Megaspeed rented Nvidia computing capacity in Southeast Asia to Alibaba, is under federal investigation on suspicion of smuggling chips and denies wrongdoing. Nvidia still listed it as a cloud partner on its website on 11 November. Companies tied to Alice Huang moved at least US$7.5 billion of Nvidia chips to Chinese buyers from 2023, according to people familiar with the shipments. Traders on Chinese social media advertised H200 and banned Blackwell B300 processors as in stock in Shenzhen and Shanghai on 12 November.
Ron Wyden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, and Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee opened an investigation on 12 November into the H200 approvals. Their letter described the 25 per cent levy as an unconstitutional export tax. It asks why the department let Megaspeed keep buying chips after Lutnick was told of the intelligence about Alice Huang, and why it cleared Asian buyers with no physical presence at their listed addresses. Meeks and Representatives Gabe Amo and Sydney Kamlager-Dove wrote to Lutnick on 9 November asking whether he, Kessler or other senior officials knew of the intelligence on Alice Huang, and requested answers by 1 December.
Nvidia changed how it reports revenue by region in its quarter to October 2025, counting sales by where customers are headquartered rather than where they are billed. The change removed Singapore as a separate line. Under the old method Singapore accounted for US$23.7 billion of Nvidia's revenue in its 2025 financial year, about 18 per cent. Nvidia's annual report says customers use Singapore to centralise invoicing and that shipments to the country were less than 2 per cent of revenue that year.
Trump and Xi
Trump and Xi agreed a one-year truce in Busan, South Korea, in October 2025 that paused tariff increases, deferred Chinese curbs on rare earth exports and committed China to buying U.S. soybeans. They met again in Beijing in May and in Washington in September, when they set up a dialogue on AI and extended the truce to 10 January. Rare earths and semiconductor rules were left for further negotiation.
Trump is due in the Philippines for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit from 16 to 18 November. He will then attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen on 18 and 19 November, where he is expected to meet Xi for the third time this year. China's foreign ministry said on 9 November that the reports about Alice Huang were "completely groundless and pure slander".
Warren and Coons, who take over the Banking and Foreign Relations committees in January, have told the administration to preserve all records on Nvidia's chip exports to China. The trade truce expires on 10 January, a week after the new Congress is sworn in.
