John Authers, Columnist

Nationalism Goes Better on Chips Than Nothing

Markets view the US taking 15% of Nvidia’s sales to China as part of the deal.

August 12, 2025 at 4:05 AM UTC

John Authers is a senior editor for markets and Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former chief markets commentator at the Financial Times, he is author of “The Fearful Rise of Markets.”

They’ll live with it.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

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National capitalism is here. Nvidia Corp. and AMD Inc. will be permitted to sell H20 chips to China in return for a 15% cut to the US government. Such crude intervention doesn’t, arguably, count as capitalism. And yet US stocks were largely flat for the day. Chipmakers themselves have surged ever since the administration’s 90-day tariff delay back in April. They’re unscathed: