Jim Cramer praises Nvidia’s Jensen Huang’s handling of U.S.-China tensions
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has already ascended to rockstar status within the tech community. Now, after securing Washington’s approval to restart AI chip sales in China, Nvidia investors are wondering: Is there anything he can’t do? “Jensen is a salesman, as well as a statesman, as well as an architect, as well as an engineer, as well as a genius,” Jim Cramer said Wednesday morning on CNBC. “He knows he has to tell the story.” Huang has been telling the same story since April, when the Trump administration tightened Biden-era rules: Locking Nvidia out of the Chinese AI market — home to half of the world’s artificial intelligence researchers — on national security grounds will actually undermine U.S. tech leadership across the globe. “Because there are so many developers there and because the world is going to adopt technology from one country or another — and we prefer it to be the American technology stack,” Huang told Jim in May . Of course, the Trump administration’s April decision also cost Nvidia billions of dollars in lost Chinese sales, a fact the company readily acknowledged. But for the most part, Huang kept his criticism of the policy focused on what he argued are the negative implications for the entire U.S. tech industry, one of the country’s economic crown jewels, amid rising competition in China. He made the case often and all over — on earnings calls , in interviews on TV, and in the halls of the U.S. Capitol Building and at industry conferences . The White House reversal, made public late Monday in an Nvidia press release, suggests that Huang’s argument broke through. In that statement, the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization said it expects to “soon” receive U.S. government licenses to sell its H20 chips to Chinese customers. The H20 is a throttled-back version of Nvidia’s top-end AI chips — designed specifically for the Chinese market to comply with Washington’s previous export rules. Speaking from Beijing on Wednesday, in at least his third public visit to China so far this year, Huang sought to downplay his impact on Washington’s about-face on the H20. He said the decision was “completely in control” of the U.S. and Chinese governments, which for months have been engaged in trade talks following Trump’s tariff escalation. “The discussion has nothing to do with me,” Huang said. Jim and other bulls on Wall Street aren’t buying it. Instead, they’re heaping praise on the way the Nvidia boss has cultivated a relationship with President Donald Trump — including traveling alongside him to the Middle East in May, when Nvidia was on the receiving end of a separate favorable Trump policy shift — at the same time, he’s avoided the ire of Beijing and maintained the adoration of Chinese techies. Before his latest visit to China, Huang met with Trump last week. In April, Nvidia also committed to produce up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure in the U.S. over the next four years. “You’re seeing what you get with one of the world’s best CEOs of all time, maybe the best,” Melius Research tech analyst Ben Reitzes said Wednesday on CNBC. “The intangibles you get. How he threaded this needle. How he went and did the right thing for the company, the world and the shareholders — all in one. It’s really wild. He turned Trump around, and then he’s obviously dealing with the Chinese. He’s hustling. I’ve never seen a guy work so hard, just at this consistent pace.” After Nvidia shares jumped 4% Tuesday on the H20 news, the stock was little changed in Wednesday’s session, a subdued day for the broader market overall, too. Still, Nvidia has gained more than 75% since its April 21 close, which came a little more than a week after the Trump administration’s H20 ban was announced, and the president was still escalating trade tensions with China. At that time, it seemed as if Nvidia had become a geopolitical pawn in the U.S.-China trade talks — a development that frustrated Jim as a longtime Nvidia investor. The thing about pawns, in the game of chess at least, is they’re capable of being converted into a queen, the most powerful piece on the board. “This has been an amazing diplomatic effort by Nvidia, and it’s paying off,” Reitzes said. “Let’s hope it continues to pay off. I’m pretty optimistic that they’re getting not only 10% of sales back, but even more. It could be up to 20%. They do need to continue to get approval for [selling chips in China] as we go throughout the Trump presidency, but I’ll never put something past Jensen to be able to do so.” In a CNBC interview Tuesday , Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a key figure in the White House’s tariff negotiations, indicated the Trump administration loosened its export controls on AI chips as part of the agreement with China to increase its exports of rare earth minerals. Lutnick said the Trump administration felt comfortable allowing China access to the H20 because it is not Nvidia’s top-of-the-line offering. That title currently belongs to the Blackwell generation of chips. “We don’t sell them our best stuff, not our second-best stuff, not even our third-best. I think fourth best is where we have come out that we’re cool,” Lutnick said. NVDA YTD mountain Nvidia’s year-to-date stock performance. Not everyone is pleased with Nvidia regaining access to the Chinese market. Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts called the Trump administration’s decision “shameful,” and made note of Huang’s engagements with the president. “Advanced chips are critical to our national security, and the Trump Administration rightfully banned Nvidia from shipping the H20 chip to the [People’s Republic of China] just three months ago,” Warren said in a statement. “Yet, true to form, the Trump Administration is now reversing itself and appeasing Nvidia’s CEO, who attended the $1-million-dollar-a-head dinner at Mar-a-Lago in April and is looking to cash in on the China market.” Warren is known for being hawkish on China, and this isn’t her first time criticizing Nvidia, either. When media reports surfaced in May that Nvidia was planning to open a research-and-development facility in Shanghai, Warren pressed the company for more details in a joint letter with Republican Sen. Jim Banks of Indiana. In February, Warren also joined forces with GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri to call for tougher export controls on Nvidia’s AI chips in the wake of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek’s efficiency breakthroughs. DeepSeek’s emergence in late January sent Nvidia shares tanking primarily on fears that fewer of its most powerful chips would be needed in the future. However, it also forced investors to contend with those renewed calls for Nvidia to lose access to the lucrative Chinese market — a long-standing risk ever since the Biden White House’s first round of export controls in 2022. For his part, Jim has also been a critic of China over the years on a range of economic matters. But when it comes to the role of AI technology in the broader geopolitical landscape, Jim said Huang has helped him evolve his view. “He got me thinking that perhaps we should be thinking more about them needing us, and when they need us — which happens very rarely — we should be there,” Jim said Wednesday. “We can dominate, and they can write everything on us, or they can write everything on their own stuff.” “Better that we be the reserve currency of tech in the world,” Jim added, referencing the way that the U.S. dollar’s status as the reserve currency of the world has provided some benefits to the U.S. economy . If they weren’t already convinced, Nvidia investors now have more evidence of the benefits provided by Huang’s stewardship, which made Nvidia the first company ever to have a $4 trillion stock market value. It closed above that threshold last week. Not even a week later, the stock was knocking on the door of $4.2 trillion. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long NVDA. 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