Donald Trump’s government is trying to slow down China’s progress in artificial intelligence (AI) by preventing US companies from exporting their chips there, but the United States has everything to lose with these measures, according to experts.
“The country will suffer even more than sole proprietorships,” said Jack Gold.
For this independent analyst and other experts, the new restrictions imposed on the American chip giants are an “important victory” for Beijing.
Deprived of American semiconductors necessary to develop AI technologies, China will have no choice but to redouble its efforts to design its own cutting-edge chips.
“Once she is competitive, she will start selling around the world. And it will then be very difficult to recover the market, once the supply chain has changed, “he explains to AFP. “It’s a real mess.”
“It is the quickest way to sell American leadership in microprocessors,” said another independent expert in the sector, Rob Enderle.
In the immediate future, the measures dropped Nvidia and AMD on the stock market this week, and will cost them billions of $.
NVIDIA, engine of the generative AI wave thanks to its advanced GPUs (graphics cards), plans $ 5.5 billion in exceptional load just for the current quarter.
AMD has announced a shortfall of $ 800 million.
Magic
Under Joe Biden, Washington had already supervised the exports of the most sophisticated semiconductors to China, to preserve the advance of American industry, and prevent Beijing from developing certain military applications.
“There is a difference between export checks and the total blocking of Donald Trump now,” said Jack Gold.
The new restrictions concern in particular the H20 fleas, designed specially by Nvidia to be sold in China while respecting the law.
The decision of the White House comes in particular from the success of the Chinese start-up Deepseek, which managed to build models of AI comparable to those of Openai (Chatgpt) and other American leaders, with less sophisticated and less large number (including H20).
Donald Trump “probably thinks that if we complicate the task of China, and other countries, we are going to win as if by magic,” sighs Jack Gold. “It makes no sense”.
“The right way to proceed, in my opinion, is to promote American companies, rather than penalizing them,” slowing down their own investments in research and development, “he adds.
Jensen Huang, the boss of Nvidia, regularly warns that Chinese competition is progressing quickly.
During a visit to Beijing on Thursday, he told senior officials wanting to “continue to be very present in China”, a “very important market” for his company.
In 2024, Nvidia achieved $ 17 billion in sales in China, or 13% of its global turnover.
Skilled workforce
The restrictions are part of the context of the trade war launched by the United States in the hope of relocating industrial production, in particular that of essential electronic components.
Donald Trump, “said he’s going to bring the factories to the United States. It will not work. But let’s put that he is right. It takes between $ 20 and 40 billion to build a new foundry and it takes 3-4 years. Until then, we pay from surcharge?! ”Asks Jack Gold.
In a conciliation effort, Jensen Huang said this week that Nvidia was going to make chips for AI superordinators entirely in the United States for the first time.
But the United States “does not have qualified workforce at all”, intervenes Jacob Bourne, an analyst of Emarketer. And this situation may not arrange “with the anti-immigration policies of the Trump administration”.
The production of fleas also requires raw materials, such as rare earths, a sector where China has all the cards in hand.
“Certainly, there are deposits in the United States,” notes the expert. But the country does not have expertise or mining infrastructure, which will cost more because of customs duties.
And their exploitation has consequences for the environment, he continues. “We can therefore expect reluctance”.
