Trump Trade: Top Trump aides opposed export of Blackwell chips to China

Catch up on the top industries and stocks that were impacted, or were predicted to be impacted, by the comments, actions and policies of President Donald Trump with this daily recap compiled by The Fly:

BLACKWELL CHIPS: A President Donald Trump wanted to discuss a request by Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang to allow sales of the company’s Blackwell artificial intelligence chips to China with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea, but top officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, told Trump the sales would threaten national security and would boost China’s AI data-center capabilities and backfire on the U.S., sources told The Wall Street Journal‘s Lingling Wei, Amrith Ramkumar and Robbie Whelan. Others against the approval included U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, according to Journal sources.

SUBSIDIES: As Beijing steps up its efforts to boost its domestic chips industry, China has increased its subsidies that cut energy bills for some of its largest data centers, Zijing Wu and Eleanor Olcott of Financial Times report. Local governments have beefed up incentives to help companies such as ByteDance, Alibaba (BABA), and Tencent (TCEHY), all of which have been hit with higher electricity costs following Beijing’s ban of purchasing Nvidia’s AI chips, people familiar with the matter told the Times. This comes after several companies complained of higher energy costs while using domestic semiconductors from companies such as Huawei and Cambricon.

SNAP PAYMENTS: The Trump administration told a federal judge it will provide only 50% of normal SNAP benefits during the shutdown, citing limits on available funds. The USDA plans to use its contingency fund but will not draw from other federal sources to cover the shortfall. Officials also warned that some states may need weeks or months to process the partial payments.