It calls on the Commerce Department to deny license applications to AI chip buyers from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
Published December 4, 2025
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators, including prominent Republican China hawk Tom Cotton, has unveiled a bill that would block President Donald Trump’s administration from loosening rules that have restricted the Chinese government’s access to artificial intelligence chips for two and a half years.
The bill, announced Thursday, is known as the SAFE CHIPS Act and was introduced by Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts and Democratic Sen. Chris Coons.
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The measure would require the Commerce Department, which oversees export controls, to deny applications from buyers in China, Russia, Iran and North Korea for 30 months to receive U.S.-made AI chips that are more advanced than those they are currently allowed to obtain. The Commerce Department would then have to explain the proposed rule changes to Congress one month before they go into effect.
“Denying the Chinese government access to (America’s best) AI chips is essential to our national security,” Ricketts said in a statement.
The bill, co-sponsored by Republican Dave McCormick and Democrats Jeanne Shaheen and Andy Kim, is a rare effort led in part by Trump’s own party to block further loosening of Trump’s restrictions on high-tech exports to China.
In the face of new Chinese export restrictions on rare earth metals that the world’s tech companies rely on, the Trump Commerce Department imposed and then rescinded restrictions on Nvidia’s H20 AI chip, a move criticized by Republican Rep. John Moolener, chairman of the House Select Committee on China.
As part of negotiations with China to delay its own rare earth regulations, President Trump has pledged to postpone for a year a rule restricting U.S. high-tech exports to sectors of already blacklisted Chinese companies and repeal Biden-era rules restricting AI chip exports to countries around the world, in part due to concerns over chip smuggling to China.
The bill was introduced as the Trump administration considers greenlighting the sale of Nvidia’s H200 artificial intelligence chip to China. China hawks in Washington worry that Beijing could use the valuable chips to equip its military with AI-enabled weapons and more powerful intelligence and surveillance capabilities.
