In a 48-hour window in mid-January 2026, the United States made its largest change to global semiconductor trade rules since the October 2022 export controls. On January 13, 2026, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) published a final rule shifting AI chip exports to China from a presumption of denial to case-by-case licensing. The change applies to products with total processing performance (TPP) below 21,000 and memory bandwidth below 6,500 GB/s, including chips such as the NVIDIA H200 and AMD MI325X. The following day, President Trump signed Proclamation 11002, imposing a 25 percent ad valorem Section 232 tariff on AI accelerator chips that meet the same performance thresholds.

A gated door: exacting licensing conditions

The case-by-case framework is not a loosening. It is a detailed compliance system. To qualify for a license, exporters must show that the chip has adequate supply on the U.S. commercial market, cap China shipments at 50 percent of shipments to U.S. end users, obtain per-shipment certification from a qualified independent U.S. testing lab before export, implement Know-Your-Customer protocols that block sanctioned parties from reaching the hardware through cloud or infrastructure-as-a-service arrangements, and attest that end uses are not military, intelligence, or weapons-of-mass-destruction related.

The change applies only to direct exports from the United States. Reexports from third countries, in-country transfers within China, and chips above the TPP or bandwidth thresholds (including the entire NVIDIA Blackwell line) remain subject to a presumption of denial.

The second half of 2026: extraterritorial tightening

Policy tightened again in the first half of 2026. On June 1, 2026, BIS issued an interim rule extending the licensing requirement to overseas subsidiaries in which a Chinese parent holds 25 percent or more, regardless of the subsidiary’s country of incorporation. A China-headquartered parent plus overseas subsidiary structure can no longer bypass the licensing obligation. That change increases compliance complexity for multinational procurement organizations.

Enforcement: criminal exposure and an Entity List pause

In March 2026, federal prosecutors charged Super Micro co-founder Liaw and two others with conspiring to violate export controls by smuggling $2.5 billion in NVIDIA servers to China. At the same time, BIS has not added new Chinese entities to the Entity List since October 2025, even though more than 100 entities, including DeepSeek and CXMT, remain pending. Lawmakers in both parties have criticized that gap.

Notes for exporters and investors

Three points stand out. First, compliance is becoming an engineering problem: if a company cannot say who can reach its GPUs over cloud or IaaS, it cannot certify the licensing conditions. Second, policy movement is itself a planning input. A rule that loosened in January and tightened by mid-year argues for structures that can step down if the rules change. Third, criminal risk has risen for resellers and logistics providers in the supply chain. Companies in this trade should review export-control compliance and assess exposure from China-headquartered affiliates.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.