Congress Builds Consensus on Chip Export Limits as Nvidia Crisis Accelerates Bills

Nvidia billed $7.9 billion to customers in China, including Hong Kong, in the quarter ended July 26 — 8.2 percent of its revenue, down from 21.9 percent in the quarter ended April 27, 2025. That shrinking exposure now sits at the center of a legislative push that Speaker Mike Johnson says has momentum behind it.

"I'm in favor of limiting those exports, and I think there's a developing consensus in Congress," Johnson told reporters in Washington on Nov. 12, hours after Nvidia announced Jensen Huang's resignation as chief executive. Huang stepped down following reports of a relationship with a former Megaspeed executive whom U.S. officials reportedly suspect of working for Chinese intelligence. She has not been charged, and Beijing denies the allegation.

Johnson said Huang did the right thing by resigning, but reserved judgment on the affair itself. "There still seems to me to be a lot of facts yet to be determined," he said, noting the Justice Department was examining the matter and that members could question Huang if they wished. The simple takeaway: the House Speaker backs export limits, but no specific bill has his name on it yet.

Which bills are moving?

The fastest vehicle is the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2027, which the lame-duck Congress must still pass. Three chip measures, advanced earlier this year by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, all sit in the Senate NDAA manager's package. Lawmakers and advocates told Reuters the Huang affair improves their odds of surviving conference.

• AI Overwatch Act. Sponsored by Foreign Affairs Chairman Brian Mast, with a Senate version from Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Jim Banks, it would treat AI chip sales to adversary nations like arms sales. Commerce must notify two congressional committees at least 30 days before licensing chips such as Nvidia's H200 or AMD's MI325X; Congress could block a sale by joint resolution, and Blackwell-class chips would face mandatory denial. The House and Senate versions have 56 co-sponsors between them.
• Chip Security Act. Sponsored by Reps. Bill Foster and Bill Huizenga, it would require advanced chips to carry location-verification mechanisms and force companies to report credible evidence of diversion or tampering.
• MATCH Act. Sponsored by Sen. Pete Ricketts, it would push U.S. allies to restrict chipmaking-equipment sales to China. It has 21 Republican and 10 Democratic co-sponsors.

Warren and Banks said on Nov. 9: "It is time for Congress to take decisive action to pass key bills like the AI Overwatch Act in the NDAA." House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, expected to become speaker on Jan. 3, said: "we're going to work hard to make sure that those provisions make it into the final version of the NDAA." If conference strips them, they return in January to a Congress where Warren chairs Senate Banking — one of the two committees the AI Overwatch Act would notify.

What is the administration doing?

The Commerce Department is finalizing a rule to stop Chinese AI firms from reaching advanced chips remotely through data centers abroad, The Information reported on Nov. 12. The rule would extend Bureau of Industry and Security controls to seven more countries, including Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, and could be announced this month. Reuters, citing three people familiar with the matter, reported that Chinese AI companies are already locking in Nvidia-powered capacity abroad before the route closes.

Sen. Tom Cotton asked Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Nov. 12 to place Chinese memory maker ChangXin Memory Technologies on the Entity List, writing that CXMT "poses a growing risk to our economic prosperity and military superiority." Megaspeed, the Singapore cloud company at the center of the Nvidia affair, is not listed either. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confronted Lutnick in the White House Situation Room, asking "How come Megaspeed isn't on the entities list?" Megaspeed says it cooperated with BIS inspections and takes export-control law "extremely seriously."

Sens. Warren and Chris Coons asked Lutnick, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House chief of staff Stephen Miller to preserve all records on Nvidia's China exports, warning the affair "raises significant concerns about the federal government's ability to effectively enforce our export controls." Their reply deadline is Nov. 17 — the same day Nvidia reports fiscal third-quarter results, its first under interim CEO Colette Kress.

Does industry still hold the leverage?

History counsels caution. The GAIN AI Act passed the Senate in last year's defense bill but was dropped from the final text after lobbying by the White House and Nvidia, Lawfare reported. In September, Nvidia and AMD asked the administration to press Congress to drop or soften the AI Overwatch provisions and to grant more time on the Chip Security Act, arguing broad restrictions could push China to accelerate its own AI chips. A former congressional staffer told Reuters that Nvidia is the biggest opponent of both bills.

The oversight noose is tightening elsewhere. Mast and Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the House China select committee, said on Nov. 11 that Huang had not responded to their request for a closed-door briefing on Nov. 18, and Mast said the committees would consider subpoenas.

For AMD, the stakes include licenses to ship MI308 chips to certain China-based customers beginning at the end of fiscal 2025, and MI325 licenses in the first half of 2026 — chips that must be inspected in the United States and carry a 25 percent import tariff for that inspection. AMD's 10-Q warns that further controls could leave it unable to sell inventory of affected products.

Nvidia's direct China exposure is now modest — H200 shipments to approved Chinese customers were under 1 percent of data center revenue in the July quarter, with a $0.4 billion charge for excess H200 inventory in the first half of the fiscal year. The greater commercial risk is the remote-access rule and a congressional veto that would turn every future H200-class license into a political vote, and the House text would end existing licenses outright.