The Government’s bottleneck slows down its exports to China

The US Department of Commerce does not give the slightest respite to chip designers to artificial intelligence (AI) Americans. And the largest are NVIDIA and AMD. When these companies receive an order from one of their Chinese clients must apply for an export license to this government entity and indicate which GPU they intend to send to China, their specifications and which client is going to use them, among other relevant information.

Once the bureaucracy has been put in place, the Department of Commerce technicians analyze the export requests in the framework established by current regulation and approve or deny the sale of integrated circuits to China. This is the usual procedure, so there is nothing new up to this point. However, as stated BloombergNVIDIA, AMD and other American AI chip designers face a very serious problem: the Commerce Department takes several months to process their export licenses.

The US bureaucracy is torpedoing NVIDIA and AMD

The staffing of the Department of Commerce has been drastically reduced in recent months, and in the current context this scenario represents a very serious problem. The Industry and Security Office of this entity is not only responsible for processing export licenses linked to AI chips; It is also in charge of carrying out investigations into the tariffs deployed by the Administration led by Donald Trump. And with fewer personnel than in 2024 and 2025 it cannot cope.

According to Bloombergthe Office of Industry and Security has lost 101 employees in recent months, which represents a 19% reduction in staff compared to what it had in 2024. Curiously, the staff who are specifically dedicated to developing regulations linked to the semiconductor industry and reviewing applications for export licenses has decreased by 20%although it has not been revealed at the moment what this personnel flight is due to.

Jeffrey Kessler, the Undersecretary of Commerce, wants, according to Tom’s Hardwarepersonally examine all license applications linked to AI chips. Here lies the bottleneck. Many of its office staff are busy with issues arising from the Iran war, and meanwhile NVIDIA has still not been able to send to China not a single H200 GPU. Officially it can do so, but before delivering this chip to its Chinese clients it must receive express approval from Kessler.

AMD is in the same situation. It has not yet been able to deliver its MI308 AI GPU to its Chinese customers. However, this problem is not only suffocating exports to China. NVIDIA is still waiting to receive approval from the Department of Commerce to be able to deliver the latest orders it has received from its clients in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. During 2025, the Office of Industry and Security took an average of 76 days to resolve export requests, but this period is increasing in 2026. Very bad news for AMD and NVIDIA.

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More information | Tom’s Hardware | Bloomberg

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