Jeffrey Kessler, the US under secretary of commerce for industry and security, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee this week that shipments of Nvidia's H200 AI chips to China have officially begun, marking the first confirmation that exports are moving under the Trump administration's revised export-control framework. Kessler characterized the volume shipped so far as "very few" chips, later calling it a "trivial" amount, and declined to disclose specific figures or buyers.

From denial to case-by-case approval

The shipments follow a policy shift the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security made in January 2026, moving H200 and equivalent AI chip exports to China from a "presumption of denial" review standard to case-by-case licensing, subject to a 25% tariff on approved sales. Under that framework, the department has cleared roughly ten Chinese firms — including Tencent and ByteDance — to purchase the chips, though Kessler's testimony indicates actual deliveries have only just started and remain limited.

Compliance tightening in parallel

The confirmation came the same week Nvidia rolled out stricter compliance checks for its Asian customers, implementing a "whitelist" system designed to prevent chips from being rerouted to China through third-party buyers. According to reporting on the new vetting process, more than half of Nvidia's previous Asian buyers have failed the tightened evaluation criteria, sharply narrowing the pool of approved purchasers even as direct licensed sales to China begin.

Why it matters

The H200 has been a flashpoint in US-China tech tensions since President Trump cleared it for export to China in December, over objections from members of Congress and some national-security officials who argued the chip could still meaningfully boost Chinese AI capabilities. Kessler's "trivial" characterization suggests the administration is trying to thread a needle: honoring the December policy shift and keeping a revenue channel open for Nvidia, while limiting the practical impact on China's frontier AI buildout. The parallel tightening of Nvidia's own compliance whitelist signals that both the company and regulators are wary of the case-by-case system being used as a backdoor for broader access, a dynamic likely to keep shipment volumes under close scrutiny in the coming months.