President Donald Trump’s administration has barred Nvidia Corp. from selling its H20 chip to China, an escalation of Washington’s tech battle with Beijing that will cost the company billions of dollars and hamstring a product line it explicitly designed to comply with previous US curbs.

This may be a “concession” from the Silicon Valley firm to get the White House to loosen further AI regulations, one analyst speculated.

The move to onshore chip manufacturing started long before the latest round of tariffs, but uncertainty around trade makes it more important.