President Trump Pushed for Nvidia China Deal — but It’s AMD’s Chips Beijing Wants

Rich Duprey

Tue, May 19, 2026 at 11:35 AM EDT 5 min read

Quick Read

• Nvidia (NVDA) won approval to sell H200 AI chips to 10 Chinese companies including Alibaba, JD.com, and ByteDance, but Beijing quickly placed Nvidia’s GPUs under tighter government scrutiny, signaling limited practical market access. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) CEO Lisa Su met with China’s vice premier at his request to deepen cooperation, positioning AMD as a potentially more workable long-term partner despite holding only a small share of China’s AI market.

• Trump’s trade opening with China appears to benefit AMD more than Nvidia because Beijing views AMD as strategically less threatening given its smaller historical footprint in China, while Nvidia’s dominant 80-90% AI GPU market share makes it a geopolitical liability.

• The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 stocks and AMD wasn't one of them. Get them here FREE.

The AI boom has turned semiconductors into geopolitical bargaining chips. One minute, Washington is tightening export controls. The next, trade delegations are back in Beijing trying to reopen markets worth tens of billions of dollars. For investors, the bigger question is simple: Which company actually benefits when the political theater ends?

President Donald Trump’s recent China trip appeared, at first glance, to hand Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) a major victory. But surprisingly, the headlines may have obscured the more important development -- Beijing seems far more interested in deepening ties with Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) instead.

Trump Helped Nvidia Reopen the Door to China

Trump traveled to China with a delegation of U.S. executives as part of a broader push to revive business ties between the world’s two largest economies. At the conclusion of the visit, multiple agreements were announced, including a deal allowing Nvidia to sell its H200 AI chips to 10 Chinese companies.

The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 stocks and AMD wasn't one of them. Get them here FREE.

Among the reported buyers were Alibaba (NYSE:BABA), JD.com (NASDAQ:JD), ByteDance, and Lenovo -- all major players in China’s cloud computing and AI infrastructure markets.

That mattered because China was once one of Nvidia’s most important growth markets. China previously accounted for roughly 20% to 25% of data center-related sales before export restrictions imposed under both the Biden and Trump administrations narrowed access to advanced AI chips.

The H200 agreement briefly suggested Nvidia might regain part of that lost business. And given Nvidia’s dominance in AI accelerators, it made sense why the announcement dominated headlines. After all, Nvidia still controls an estimated 80% to 90% share of the AI GPU market.