Disclosures show Trump bought Nvidia stock before reversing China chip export rule

Disclosures show $1m to $5m Nvidia purchase before rule change

DeKleptocracy’s analysis, reported by The Guardian on November 13, 2026, examines Trump’s public financial disclosures against a sequence of China policy decisions that benefited Nvidia. In May 2025, Trump’s administration rescinded a Biden-era rule designed to prevent the most advanced US-made AI chips from being exported to China. The rule aimed to strengthen the US’s own chip industry and to protect America from what was widely regarded as a national security threat: the possibility that China might develop superior AI.

In the days before he rescinded the rule, Trump’s public financial disclosures indicate that he bought between $1m (£760,000) and $5m worth of Nvidia stock, a purchase noted in the DeKleptocracy analysis. His disclosures also show he bought shares in other tech companies, including Apple, Meta and Microsoft.

The rescinded diffusion rule would have limited Nvidia’s ability to sell to what has been one of its largest markets: China accounted for about a quarter of the company’s sales between 2010 and 2022. Nvidia’s shares rose in value just after Trump announced the rescission of the rule, and after he had bought the stock.

In December 2025 Trump said he would allow Nvidia to sell H200 chips to China, a decision that was greenlit by the Department of Commerce in January 2026. The move was controversial. H200s were one of the company’s most advanced chips — six times better than what was available in China at the time, said experts. The Council on Foreign Relations suggested selling H200s would “supercharge” China’s future AI factories and strengthen the US’s rival.

Trump’s public financial disclosures indicate he made at least three purchases of Nvidia shares in the days after announcing that decision, all of them between $250,001 and $500,000. These trades are among Trump’s larger purchases of Nvidia stock, although he appears to have made dozens of transactions involving the chipmaker’s shares since taking office.

DeKleptocracy wrote in its analysis: “While the country debates how a possible Chinese spy may have manipulated White House policy for one AI company, it must grapple with how Trump’s corruption may have motivated him to deliver the entire AI industry’s technology to China.”

The stock disclosures sit alongside a broader controversy involving Nvidia’s former chief executive, Jensen Huang, who has been described as a close Trump ally and has met the president a number of times. The US — and the global economy — have been grappling with revelations that Huang had an affair with an alleged Chinese spy, Alice Huang. Reports have suggested this relationship allowed Alice Huang’s company, Megaspeed, to obtain billions of dollars worth of Nvidia’s chips, even as other companies struggled. Trump was twice briefed by US intelligence officials on their conclusions that Alice Huang was a Chinese asset. He did not act on this assessment.

Nvidia made a $25m contribution to Trump’s ballroom in October 2025, with Huang saying he was “delighted to be a part of it”.