US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has called Nvidia a structurally important company. That is a short sentence carrying a lot of weight.
When the person running America’s trade agenda calls a chipmaker structural, he is putting it closer to infrastructure than to an ordinary stock. The remark lands while Nvidia’s most advanced chips are caught between Washington’s security priorities and China’s appetite for AI hardware.
What Greer said, and what surrounds it
Greer, who has served as USTR since 2025, has taken a firm line on Nvidia’s exports to China. The focus is the H200, one of the company’s advanced AI semiconductors.
His position is that decisions on H200 shipments to China are made by the federal government on their own track. They are treated as national security matters, not as chips to be traded across the table in bilateral talks.
Put plainly, Nvidia’s best hardware is not a sweetener Washington plans to offer Beijing in exchange for something else. The security review comes first, and trade talks happen somewhere else.
The Trump administration has opened a narrow path for the H200. Advanced AI chips, including the H200, that are shipped via the US face a 25% tariff. A domestic security review is also required before any final export gets approved.
Nvidia’s shrinking China exposure
The numbers show how much the ground has moved for Nvidia in China.
In fiscal 2024, the China and Hong Kong market accounted for 20.2% of Nvidia’s revenue. By the first half of fiscal 2027, that share had fallen to 7.0%, or $12.4 billion out of $177.8 billion.
Greer has also acknowledged that Chinese buyers still show commercial interest in these advanced chips. At the same time, the situation underscores Beijing’s need to cultivate its own alternatives and lessen its reliance on imports.
Export controls as a moving target
Greer has indicated that export controls are under ongoing reassessment. The yardsticks are the technological balance between countries and national security.
Greer has also suggested that tariffs on semiconductors could help reshoring efforts, the push to bring chip manufacturing back to US soil. He has hinted, however, that no immediate new chip tariffs are expected through parts of 2026.
Why the phrase “structurally important” matters
Officials do not usually single out individual companies with that kind of language. Calling Nvidia structural signals that Washington sees the company as part of the backbone of its tech and security posture.
That cuts in two directions. On one hand, it suggests policymakers understand that Nvidia’s health matters to the broader US position in AI. On the other, it explains why the government wants such tight control over where Nvidia’s top chips end up.
What this means for Nvidia and the chip market
For investors, the clearest takeaway is that China is now a smaller, more conditional piece of Nvidia’s story. The drop from 20.2% to 7.0% of revenue shows the business has already absorbed a lot of the policy pain.
The 25% tariff and security review structure creates a different kind of uncertainty. Even approved sales of the H200 come with added cost and an extra layer of government sign-off, which makes China revenue harder to forecast.
Greer’s emphasis on ongoing reassessment means the policy could loosen or tighten. Anyone modeling Nvidia’s China business is essentially modeling Washington’s evolving view of the technological balance with Beijing.
Greer’s view that chip tariffs could support domestic manufacturing points to a longer-term policy direction, even if he has signaled nothing immediate on that front through parts of 2026.