Schumer warns Trump against easing AI chip export controls to China

Chuck Schumer took to the Senate floor on September 17 with a pointed message for the Trump administration: do not hand China the tools to close the AI gap. The Senate Democratic leader argued that any loosening of export controls on advanced AI chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment ahead of President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington would undermine US national security. Schumer framed the issue in stark terms, calling the prevention of Chinese Communist Party access to cutting-edge chip technology a “non-negotiable.” The timing was deliberate. Xi is scheduled to arrive in Washington roughly one week after the remarks. The Nvidia approvals that lit the fuse Schumer’s floor speech wasn’t delivered in a vacuum. It’s the latest volley in a campaign that Democrats have been waging since late 2025, when the Trump administration approved sales of Nvidia’s H200 AI chips to several major Chinese firms. Among the buyers: Alibaba and Tencent, two of China’s largest technology conglomerates. For critics like Schumer, those approvals represent a dangerous reversal of the containment strategy that both the Trump and Biden administrations had built over years of escalating tech competi...