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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent outlined in an interview with Bloomberg earlier today that the Trump administration aims to pay down the US debt through the revenue that it will generate from its commission on NVIDIA and AMD's AI chip sales to China. NVIDIA and AMD will pay a 15% fee to the US government over their China AI GPU sales, with NVIDIA's H20 confirmed to be the firm's only product covered by the new requirement. In his interview, Bessent outlined that the idea to introduce the fee was the President's idea and added that it could expand to other industries over time.
President Trump Is Behind NVIDIA's China Chip Agreement, Says Treasury Secretary Bessent
During his interview, the Treasury Secretary was asked where the agreement with NVIDIA came from. He outlined that Trump came up with the deal, and added that "the President is one of the most open-minded people I know. He does everything at first principles. Why did we do things this way? Why shouldn't we do it the other way?"
Bessent believes that the deal will prove to be beneficial for NVIDIA as well since it. will enable the firm "to expand into China that can make NVIDIA chips the bellwether for Chinese technology and then the US taxpayer gets a share of that."
He also remained open to the agreement being applied to other industries, but remarked that right now it was unique to AMD and NVIDIA.
Commenting on whether the US government was compromising national security concerns or putting a 'price' on them, Bessent asserted that there are no security concerns as the NVIDIA H20 GPUs are not the latest chips. "There are no national security concerns here. We would not sell any of the advanced chips. So the H20s, I don't know whether you'd say they are four, five, six levels down the chip stack," he said. "What we do not want here. . .is more Huawei to have a digital Belt and Road. So we do not want the standard to become Chinese across the world or even in China," Bessent added.
After NVIDIA received its H20 export licenses, multiple reports have claimed that the Chinese government is concerned about backdoors and tracking systems in the products and is advising Chinese firms to not rely on NVIDIA's products. Bessent takes the concern as a sign indicating Chinese worries "about the NVIDIA chips becoming the standard in China."
He went as far as to agree with the assessment that the Chinese are stealing US technology. "Look, NVIDIA's an incredible product. A lot of the technology in China is, you know, they're piggybacking, and I would use piggybacking as kind of word for acquiring our technology," he said.
Bessent added that the Trump administration's dealings with NVIDIA are not the government exercising control over private business. His administration is looking to transform "unfettered trade" into "secure trade or fair trade," he outlined. "Where we got was, what this unfettered trade, we did not have secure trade or fair trade. So now we're trying to make it secure. And so now we are trying to make it secure. "You don't want to, we're not sending out the highest level of chips. And we don't want to sell everything to everybody. So there is a need for intervention," he added.
Finally, the government will "pay down the debt," Bessent revealed. He commented on reports about the money going back to. US citizens by sharing that Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill came with provisions such as no tax on tips or overtime, which were beneficial for the bottom 50% of wage earners.
About the author: Ramish is a seasoned technology writer and editor with more than a decade of experience. He specializes in semiconductor fabrication and market analysis. With a background in finance and supply chain management - via his bachelors in Finance and a micromasters in supply chain management from MIT - Ramish combines financial rigor with deep industry insight to deliver accurate and authoritative coverage.
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