\n<\/p>\n
Jensen Huang, once almost unknown in Washington, this week won a lobbying victory that could be worth billions of dollars to the semiconductor giant he co-founded, Nvidia.<\/p>\n
The White House\u2019s decision to allow exports of advanced chips to China\u2019s vast market, largely brokered by Huang, has left competitors wondering how the soft-spoken electrical engineer charmed his way into the US president\u2019s good books.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump, who previously admitted he had \u201cnever heard\u201d of Nvidia or Huang, on Monday defied opposition within his own Maga coalition in allowing the company to sell its H200 chips to China, with the US taking a 25 per cent cut.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think game recognises game,\u201d said a person familiar with the company\u2019s strategy, of the president\u2019s newfound fondness for Huang.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way Trump wants to control the federal government is effectively the way that Jensen runs Nvidia. There are no fiefdoms\u2009.\u2009.\u2009. and Jensen\u2019s instincts kind of reign.\u201d<\/p>\n
The $4tn company\u2019s success in courting the president is especially remarkable because Nvidia until recently had a threadbare lobbying operation in Washington.<\/p>\n
Huang, who had not been a regular in the capital before this year, was initially sceptical of the \u201cvalue proposition\u201d of courting Trump after his re-election in November, said a person familiar with Nvidia\u2019s strategy. <\/p>\n
\u201c[Huang must have] remembered enough from Trump 1 to know that he is mercurial as hell and you can\u2019t really buy stability,\u201d the person said. Others say he was simply assessing how best to help the administration understand America\u2019s artificial intelligence sector.<\/p>\n
When tech billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos flocked to pay fealty to Trump at his inauguration in January, Huang was celebrating Lunar New Year with employees in his native Taiwan, 8,000 miles away.<\/p>\n
His early access to the president was brokered by Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary. <\/p>\n
\u201c[Lutnick] started the conversation with: \u2018Jensen\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009I just want to let you know that you\u2019re a national treasure, Nvidia is a national treasure. And whenever you need access to the president, the administration, you call us\u2019,\u201d Huang told Joe Rogan\u2019s podcast this month. \u201cAnd it was completely true\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009they [were] always available.\u201d<\/p>\n
Donald Trump and Jensen Huang at the White House in April. Nvidia\u2019s chief met the president privately at least six times this year <\/span> \u00a9 Jim Watson\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n But the company, which sells the advanced chips that power sophisticated AI models, was drawn deeper into politics when the White House restricted the sale of its H20 chips to China \u2014 as part of Trump\u2019s wider trade conflict with Beijing.<\/p>\n Understanding that the president wanted companies to commit to expanding manufacturing in the US, Nvidia soon joined a consortium that has pledged to invest half a trillion dollars domestically over the next four years.<\/p>\n Huang in April flew to Mar-a-Lago to talk to Trump on the sidelines of a $1mn per head dinner. The administration softened its stance in the following months.<\/p>\n As well as meeting Trump privately at least six times this year and speaking to him directly on the phone, Huang accompanied the president to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the UK. <\/p>\n He was front and centre at the White House\u2019s AI Action Plan summit in July, where he drew effusive praise from Trump. \u201cWhat a job you\u2019ve done, man,\u201d the president gushed.<\/p>\n In October, Huang contributed to the president\u2019s ballroom project. <\/p>\n The Nvidia CEO simultaneously began courting lawmakers. Huang made the case that blocking US technology from Chinese AI developers would not stop their advances but would encourage China\u2019s own chipmakers to catch up. <\/p>\n He told the House foreign affairs committee in May that Nvidia\u2019s absence from the Asian country meant \u201ccompetitors like Huawei [were] already stepping in\u201d. <\/p>\n Nvidia\u2019s teams in China produced their own research on chipmaking competitors.<\/p>\n \u201cNvidia has focused on educating policymakers,\u201d another person with knowledge of the strategy said. \u201cIts predictions were often proved accurate, especially that China\u2019s capabilities would accelerate, not slow down, if [Nvidia was] shut out of the market.\u201d<\/p>\n Nvidia declined to comment on its lobbying efforts.<\/p>\n Jensen Huang at an event in Beijing in July. He convinced the White House that it was in the US\u2019s best interests for Nvidia to maintain its dominance by selling its products as widely as possible<\/span> \u00a9 Kyodo\/AP<\/span><\/p>\n The company\u2019s advocacy on Capitol Hill was led by Tim Teter, an intellectual property lawyer who as the company\u2019s top legal executive has become one of Huang\u2019s most trusted advisers. <\/p>\n Unlike many of its competitors, Nvidia has made its case directly, largely eschewing established lobbyists and industry associations. It rapidly built out an in-house team, hiring a Republican lobbyist who had worked for Ivanka Trump.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have significantly ramped up their efforts in DC,\u201d said a senior Washington lobbyist. \u201cThey had a one-person shop that didn\u2019t lobby, and now have a much larger team.\u201d<\/p>\n Huang\u2019s efforts remained focused on chip exports. Nvidia\u2019s primary role as a hardware provider \u2014 rather than a model builder such as OpenAI \u2014 meant it was not made to answer for job losses from AI or damage to children\u2019s mental health, said three people familiar with discussions on the Hill.<\/p>\n Still, his campaign faced serious obstacles. Many national security officials disagree with Nvidia\u2019s arguments for selling US chips to China, as do researchers at prominent Washington think-tanks.<\/p>\n Trump in July revealed that upon first hearing of Nvidia\u2019s huge market share, his instinct was to break up the company. <\/p>\n Steve Bannon, the White House strategist in the first Trump administration who is influential in the Maga camp, blasted the deal this week, saying the president was being \u201cbadly advised\u201d, and criticised Republicans for not speaking out.<\/p>\n Democrats including senator Elizabeth Warren have denounced Huang for mainly meeting Republicans, in a sign that the company could face more opposition if Trump loses his majority in the House or Senate after November\u2019s midterms.<\/p>\n An initial deal to reopen exports of the H20 \u2014 for which Nvidia had to agree to give the US a 15 per cent cut \u2014 was complicated by Beijing\u2019s resistance to these lower-specification chips. <\/p>\n Nvidia\u2019s attention then turned to efforts to get the White House to allow sales of H200 chips to China, which are more advanced than the H20 though still behind the company\u2019s latest generation. <\/p>\n Ultimately, Huang convinced the administration that it was in the US\u2019s best interests for Nvidia to maintain its dominance by selling its products as widely as possible.<\/p>\n Recommended<\/p>\n Robert O\u2019Brien, a former national security adviser to Trump who helped Nvidia hone its message to Washington, said \u201cthe US domestic market, as big as it is, is not big enough to absorb all [the] chips\u201d from Nvidia and its rivals including Intel and AMD \u201cand have them stay leaders in the game\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is really strongly Jensen\u2019s view,\u201d a US official with knowledge of the negotiations said. \u201cAnd I think everybody takes that view as being sincere.\u201d<\/p>\n Nvidia has its critics in Washington. Republican senator Dave McCormick said he was \u201cconcerned\u201d about the H200 decision. <\/p>\n A measure in a defence funding bill that would have restricted its ability to sell advanced chips to China was dropped this week. But a bipartisan bill seeking to restrict the administration from greenlighting Nvidia\u2019s chip sales is gaining some traction in Congress, especially among those who fear the administration will one day approve sales of the company\u2019s leading Blackwell chips to the Asian nation.<\/p>\n For now, Trump\u2019s embrace of Huang\u2019s position has led many Republican lawmakers, who called for tougher export controls in Joe Biden\u2019s presidency, to stay silent.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the end of the day, it was a meeting between [Huang] and the president,\u201d said a person with knowledge of the H200 decision. \u201cThat\u2019s how this came about.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jensen Huang, once almost unknown in Washington, this week won a lobbying victory that could be worth billions of dollars to the semiconductor giant he co-founded, Nvidia. The White House\u2019s decision to allow exports of advanced chips to China\u2019s vast market, largely brokered by Huang, has left competitors wondering how the soft-spoken electrical engineer charmed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[964,17745,11156,81,1341],"class_list":{"0":"post-37380","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-donald","9":"tag-huang","10":"tag-jensen","11":"tag-trump","12":"tag-won"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}