TMTPOST -- The White House on Tuesday suggested more companies may have to make deals in exchange for export licenses, just like the arrangement that artificial intelligence (AI) chip titan Nvidia Corporation recently had agreed to.

Credit：Xinhua News Agency

The Trump administration is still working out the details of its 15% export tax on Nvidia and could bring deals of this kind to more companies, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. “Right now it stands with these two companies. Perhaps it could expand in the future to other companies,” said Leavitt.

“The legality of it, the mechanics of it, is still being ironed out by the Department of Commerce, and I would defer you to them for any further details on how it will actually be implemented,” the White House spokesperson  continued.

The so-called 15% export tax that Nvidia is subject to involves a deal that was reported to be made to secure export licenses for its chips sold to China.

The Financial Times (FT) on Sunday cited a U.S. official as saying that Nvidia would share 15% of the revenue from sales of its H20 chips  in China and its competitor Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD)  will share the same share from MI308 revenues. Bloomberg later echoed the report, noting the agreement Nvidia and AMD struck with the U.S. government were unusual if not unprecedented arrangement that stands to unnerve US companies and Beijing alike.

Nvidia responded to these reports, saying that"We follow rules the US 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," it added. A spokesperson for AMD said the U.S. approved its applications to export some AI processors to China but did not directly address the revenue-sharing agreement, and said the company's business adheres to all U.S. export controls.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday confirmed aforementioned reports. He said he originally asked Nvidia for a 20% cut of its chip sales to China, but lowered the share of revenue to 15% after its CEO Jensen Huang negotiated with him. 

Trump called Nvidia’s H20 an “old chip that China already has” and  “obsolete.” “So I said, ‘listen, I want 20% if I’m going to approve this for you, for the country,’” Trump said at a news conference in Washington,referring to his meeting talk with Huang. H20 is the microprocessor that Nvidia had specially tailored to the Chinese market to comply with the Biden-era AI chip export controls.

Trump said he wouldn’t allow Blackwell, Nvdia’s latest advanced AI chip, to be sold to China without significant downgrade, and indicated he could allow the company to sell the scaled-down Blackwell. "Jensen also has the new chip, the Blackwell. A somewhat enhanced-in-a-negative-way Blackwell. In other words, take 30% to 50% off of it," said Trump. "I think he’s coming to see me again about that, but that will be an unenhanced version of the big one," he added. 

Some former government officials and trade lawyers say the arrangement that gives a slice of companies’ revenue from chip sales in China  isn’t just unprecedented but may be illegal. The U.S. Constitution prohibis Congress from levying taxes and duties on articles exported from any state. 

“We’re far beyond uncharted waters. We’re in an uncharted universe,” said Doug Jacobson, an international trade attorney for Jacobson Burton Kelley, who said he and his colleagues were “aghast” at the arrangement. The State Department can charge fees for export licenses related to defense technology, but those fees aren’t based on revenue earned, Jacobson said.

“No fee may be charged with consideration of any application for a license. This could run afoul of that,” said Aiysha Hussain, a partner at law firm Mayer Brown who served as a senior advisor at the BIS between 2021 and 2024.

Trade lawyer Jeremy Iloulian said it is hard to tell if Trump’s move would considered an “export tax” or some other form of payment without knowing more about the arrangement. 

"It sure looks like an export tax to me ... they can call it whatever they want. It really looks a lot like the government is skimming a little bit off the top," said Kyle Handley, a professor at the University of California San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy.