Some Democrats are troubled by President Donald Trump’s recent deal to allow two tech companies to sell artificial intelligence chips to China as long as they provide the U.S. government some of the revenue.
“I certainly have concerns about what we might call linkage, that is linking revenue to the Treasury to national security decisions,” Rep. Sam Liccardo, whose district contains portions of Silicon Valley, told NOTUS in a phone interview. “Because you wouldn’t want to have compromises made for the purposes of revenue.”
There has been a long-held bipartisan agreement that the U.S. should limit chip exports to China and certain other countries in the race for AI dominance. While Liccardo and other Democrats said they support requiring export licenses on these chips, they don’t want the administration to forget about the national security concerns of selling them to China.
Liccardo’s office said in an email that “he supports the issuance of export licenses to AMD and Nvidia, but objects to linking the licensing to revenue generation, because of the primacy of national security concerns.”
Trump signed a deal Monday with companies Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices that requires them to pay the U.S. government 15% of the revenue they receive from chip sales to China, and suggested he’d consider similar arrangements with other companies that create chips powering artificial intelligence.
The office of Rep. Ami Bera, who represents Sacramento County, another tech company hub in California, said he is worried about the national security implications of Trump’s deal and whether the U.S. will keep up with China in the tech space. Bera raised similar issues last month when he introduced bipartisan legislation that would increase U.S. investments in critical minerals.
One lawmaker is planning a bill to address the matter.
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat and ranking member on the House’s select committee on China, is “finalizing legislation” that would require Congress to play an active role in export policy for chips that power AI, according to his office.
“He is deeply concerned about both the national security implications of this step and the legality of collecting this type of revenue in exchange for a license,” Krishnamoorthi’s office told NOTUS in a statement.
It’s not clear how much support he will receive. Earlier this year, after Chinese startup DeepSeek released an AI model developed with less-advanced chips, some congressional Republicans pushed for tighter regulations on exports to China and other countries.
In April, the Trump administration barred Nvidia from selling its H20 chips, which the company developed to comply with former President Joe Biden’s chip export controls, to China.
Trump reversed the ban in July ahead of trade talks with China.
During a press conference announcing the new Nvidia and AMD deal, Trump argued in favor of selling the H20 chips to China because the chip “still has a market.” He also called the chip “obsolete” and “an old chip that China already has.”
Trump and the White House have shot back at officials who have raised national security concerns about the chip’s sale.
“It’s quite rich to see Democrats and irrelevant ‘experts’, who were totally MIA when Joe Biden’s autopen administration let H20 chips and other advanced technologies freely flow to China, now pretend to care about our national and economic security,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement.
AMD did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Nvidia said the company follows “rules the U.S. government sets for our participation in worldwide markets.”
“While we haven’t shipped H20 to China for months, we hope export control rules will let America compete in China and worldwide,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “America cannot repeat 5G and lose telecommunication leadership. America’s AI tech stack can be the world’s standard if we race.”
Two former national security officials from Trump’s administration criticized the deal to The New York Times, calling it “a strategic misstep that endangers the United States’ economic and military edge in artificial intelligence.”
Rep. John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican who chairs the select committee on China, questioned the legal basis of Trump’s deal.
And Liccardo said that he and his Democratic colleagues may write letters to the Trump administration demanding details.
“I’d much rather we’re doing this out in the open rather than have China get access to the same chips without our ability to have any insight about where and how those chips are being used,” he said.
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This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and San José Spotlight.
This story has been updated to include a statement from Liccardo’s office.