Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang speaks with the media ahead of a meeting with the Senate Banking Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 3, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

By Alexandra Alper

WASHINGTON, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren called on Thursday for Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Commerce Department Secretary Howard Lutnick to testify after President Donald Trump announced plans to greenlight sales of Nvidia's second-most advanced AI chip to China.

In a speech on the Senate floor, she also raised concerns that Trump could potentially silence his own Justice Department after it announced a crackdown on a smuggling operation that included those chips, known as the H200, to China on the same day Trump announced the policy change.

"Will Donald Trump muzzle his own Justice Department because he does not want Americans to know that he is selling out our national security?" she asked.

The Commerce Department did not respond to a request for comment. White House spokesman Kush Desai said, “There’s an obvious difference between chips being illegally smuggled to unknown buyers without regulatory oversight and chips being exported following national security inspections to specifically designated end users."

Nvidia emphasized in a statement that H200 sales to China would still require a U.S. government license, and described the overall share of chips going to China as a small percentage of the advanced AI chips already sold to U.S. customers. "America's foreign competitors and the Administration's critics are pushing the same end — to force massive commercial markets to support and promote foreign competition," the company added.

China hardliners and Democratic lawmakers slammed the decision to greenlight the chip over concerns that Beijing could harness the technology to supercharge its military.

(Reporting by Alexandra Alper; Editing by Nia Williams and Rod Nickel)