The Trump administration is preparing to roll back significant portions of the Biden-era rules that govern global chip exports and AI technology transfers. According to Bloomberg's sources familiar with the matter, the so-called "AI diffusion" framework, due to take effect on May 15, will be scrapped in favor of simpler, bilateral licensing agreements. Under the current plan, rather than sorting about 120 countries into three tiers with differing volume caps, the US will negotiate individual contracts with partners like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Even with these changes, restrictions on China's access to advanced chips will stay firmly in place, and may even be reinforced. The proposed regulations are expected to maintain the outright ban on shipments to China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, while adding stricter oversight for nations that have previously rerouted US-origin semiconductors toward Beijing's AI and military programs. US officials are also considering lowering the notification threshold for smaller shipments, from 1,700 NVIDIA H100 equivalent units down to around 500, to close loopholes used by alleged smuggling networks.

Industry reaction has been mixed but largely positive. Chipmakers saw their share prices climb when news of the repeal broke, citing hopes for clearer rules and fewer compliance headaches. Governments in Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe are watching closely and urging Washington to provide detailed guidance during the transition to avoid market disruptions. The AI diffusion rule was introduced in January 2025 with the goal of drawing countries such as India, Malaysia, and Poland into a more stringent export regime. Critics have argued that its complex, tiered system stifled innovation and diplomatic flexibility. The incoming framework will instead rely on targeted, outcome-driven accords that tie access to strategic investments and broader trade incentives. An official announcement could come as soon as Thursday, just before President Trump's trip to the Middle East. Final details are expected to be released in the coming weeks, marking a new chapter in US semiconductor diplomacy.

President Trump's administration has announced that NVIDIA's H20 AI chip will require a special export license for any shipment to China, Hong Kong, or Macau for the indefinite future. The Commerce Department delivered the news to NVIDIA on April 14, 2025, citing worries that the H20 could be redirected into Chinese supercomputers with potential military applications. NVIDIA designed the H20 specifically to comply with earlier US curbs by scaling back performance from its flagship H100 model. The H20 features 96 GB of HBM3 memory running at up to 4.0 TB/s, delivers roughly 296 TeraFLOPS of mixed‑precision compute power, and offers a performance density of about 2.9 TeraFLOPS per die. Its single‑precision (FP32) throughput is around 74 TeraFLOPS, with FP16 performance reaching approximately 148 TeraFLOPS. In a regulatory filing on April 15, NVIDIA warned that it will record about $5.5 billion in writedowns this quarter related to H20 inventory and purchase commitments now blocked by the license requirement.

Shares of NVIDIA fell roughly 6 percent in after‑hours trading on April 15, triggering a wider sell‑off in semiconductor stocks from the US to Japan. South Korea's Samsung and SK Hynix each slid about 3 percent, while AMD also dropped on concerns about broader chip‑export curbs. Analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence project that, if the restrictions persist, NVIDIA's China‑related data center revenue could shrink to low‑ or mid‑single digits as a percentage of total sales, down from roughly 13 percent in fiscal 2024. Chinese AI players such as Huawei stand to gain as customers seek alternative inference accelerators. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has pledged to maintain a tough stance on chip exports to China even as NVIDIA commits up to $500 billion in US AI infrastructure investments over the next four years. Everyone is now watching closely to see whether any H20 export licenses are approved and how long the ban might remain in place.

High-performance GPUs manufactured in Taiwan could now enter the US market tariff-free through a technical loophole in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), found by a research firm SemiAnalysis. Companies can route Taiwan-made GPUs through assembly facilities in Mexico and Canada, effectively circumventing the 32% import duty that would otherwise apply to direct shipments from Taiwan. The exemption hinges on a Most-Favored-Nation clause within the USMCA framework that specifically classifies digital processing units (HTS 8471.50), automatic data processing machine units (HTS 8471.80), and their associated components (HTS 8473.30) as "originating goods." This classification applies regardless of manufacturing origin, creating a duty-free pathway for NVIDIA HGX boards, GB200 baseboards, and RTX GPU cards that undergo final assembly in North American facilities.

The strategy capitalizes on two complementary policy mechanisms. First, President Trump's March 7 executive orders maintained existing USMCA exemptions, preserving the duty-free status for compliant goods from Canada and Mexico. Second, the USMCA's expanded definition of originating products creates a classification framework that treats assembled servers and related components as North American products despite their core manufacturing in Taiwan. For US technology firms, the additional logistical complexity of cross-border assembly operations is offset by eliminating substantial import duties on these high-value components. This practice mirrors established protocols in agricultural imports, where products like Mexican avocados gain preferential treatment under similar origin rules. The global supply chain is adapting quickly, especially in high-margin areas like GPUs, which power AI workloads. We are yet to see how companies set up manufacturing and logistics in the new era of tariff-driven narrative.

With U.S. economic sanctions on Venezuela taking effect, Adobe discontinued its Creative Cloud (CC) subscription service in the country, stranding thousands of creators without their creative apps. Adobe switched to SaaS-only in several markets and the only legal way for creators to use popular Adobe apps such as Photoshop, Premier, Acrobat, Lightroom, and Illustrator, is through CC. Much like Steam, CC is a DRM platform that lets you subscribe to Adobe apps on monthly or annual payment plans, and provides you with the latest versions of the apps, with regular updates. You also get access to cloud-storage an asset library, and a social network of creators.

Adobe's exit from Venezuela isn't sudden, the company has given Venezuelan creators until October 28th to download any content stored on their accounts. From October 29th, Adobe's servers will longer respond to requests from Venezuela. This also means Creative Cloud apps will break. CC authenticates users by dialing home each time an app is launched. If a user is falling behind on subscription payments or if the app can't reach Adobe servers, they are usually given a 14-day grace period before the app stops working. Executive Order 13884 signed by President Trump strips Venezuela of all U.S. businesses, which would include payment processors such as Visa and MasterCard.

President Donald Trump Sunday announced a fresh round of import tariffs affecting $200 billion worth electronics goods from China, starting next Friday. President Trump in a Tweet said that his administration would raise import tariffs to a staggering 25 percent from the existing 10 percent, a 2.5 times change, a move that could increase prices of consumer-electronics and computer hardware by at least 14 percent unless retailers are willing to take a hit on their margins. Tech stocks took a beating to this news as Dow Jones Industrial index fell 1.5 percent, and Nikkei shrunk 0.2 percent.

In the short term, as we mentioned, the new tariffs can increase end-user prices by at least 14 percent. In the medium-term, electronics companies could move their manufacturing out of China, transferring the costs of doing so to the consumer. In the long term, prices could remain high as the countries companies are relocating to may not have the labor or logistics cost advantages of China.

After being blocked via an executive order by President Trump, Broadcom has given up on their quest to acquire Qualcomm. The chipmaker will also be withdrawing the slate of independent director candidates that they were planning to nominate at Qualcomm's 2018 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. Although highly disappointed with the outcome, Broadcom respects President Trump's decision. The company also wants to thank the stockholders for their unconditional support during the entire process. With this whole Qualcomm takeover business out of the way, Broadcom will concentrate on their redomiciliation process.

US President Donald Trump blocked the potentially-$117 billion Broadcom-Qualcomm merger through an executive order. The White House considered damning observations by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which had been studying potential national security implications of this merger. "There is credible evidence that leads me to believe that Broadcom Ltd. [by acquiring Qualcomm] might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States," wrote President Trump in the order.

Broadcom expressed shock and disbelief over the order. The company, in a statement, said that it "strongly disagrees that its proposed acquisition of Qualcomm raises any national security concerns." Qualcomm, meanwhile, battened down the hatches for any press comments. The American chipmaker had been wrestling an increasingly Broadcom-slanted board that was all but ready to sell the company to Broadcom at an undervalued price. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, the Trump administration has shot down ten similar deals since it came to power, in which foreign companies - overwhelmingly Chinese in national origin - had attempted buy out American high-technology firms. Californian Intel is still in the foray to swallow Broadcom, as CFIUS doesn't concern itself with American companies buying out foreign firms.

Only yesterday, the United States' House of Representatives carried the US Senate's joint resolution to eliminate broadband privacy rules. These rules, which are now seemingly on their way to political oblivion, would have required ISPs to get consumers' explicit consent before selling or sharing Web browsing data and other private information with advertisers and other companies. Much like last week's Senate joint resolution, the House's voting fell mainly along partisan lines (215 for, 205 against, with 15 Republican and 190 Democratic representatives voting against the repeal) to scrap the proposed FCC rules.

President Trump's desk (and the President himself) are now all that stand before the ISP's ability to collect geo-location data, financial and health information, children's information, Social Security numbers, Web browsing history, app usage history, and the content of communications - information that gives the most unthinkable leeway in understanding your daily habits. However, President Trump's administration have issued a statement whereas they "strongly support House passage of S.J.Res. 34, which would nullify the Federal Communications Commission's final rule titled "Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband and Other Telecommunication Services".

By now, we've all seen, or at least heard, about Intel CEO's Brian Kraznich Fab 42 announcement (done from the Oval Office, no less). It was to be a joint press conference to announce a highly impactful investment on U.S. soil, which also turned into some welcome PR for Intel, and got the CEO some face time with the President.

It has to be said though, that hailing this as a Trump administration win is simply politics doing its best: spinning the truth for its own benefit. I say this because the original announcement for the construction of this Arizona fab was done way back in 2011, with then Intel CEO Paul Otellini breaking the news that they would spend $5 billion on the plant during the Obama Administration. Construction started that year, with overall expectation for its completion being somewhere around 2013. Cue the usual delays, and enter 2013's 10% decline of the PC market, and Intel did what any sensible company would do in the wake of lower expected volume of shipments (and respectively lower production needs) - they postponed the opening of the factory, indefinitely, instead choosing to improve manufacturing capability of its then already-operational fabs. So, the factory wasn't announced because of President Trump's policies and overall government acumen, nor is it probably going to be finished by the time his first term ends.