Nvidia Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. have agreed to pay 15% of their revenues from Chinese AI chip sales to the US government in an unusual, legally questionable deal that reflects the Trump administration’s willingness to soften export controls in exchange for financial payouts.

The global AI chip race narrative used to be about U.S. national security, but apparently now it's about tariffs: Nvidia and AMD have agreed to pay the U.S. government 15% of the revenue they make from sales of high-end AI chips to China in exchange for licenses to sell those chips in the country,

A Fragile Foothold in China Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) recently secured U.S. approval to resume sales of their lower-end AI chips, the H20 and MI308, respectively, to China,