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US reportedly considering sweeping new chip export controls Rebecca Szkutak 1:24 PM PST · March 5, 2026 How, and if, the Trump administration plans to regulate the export of semiconductors has remained unclear since Donald Trump took office last year. Now, we have an idea of what the administration is thinking.
U.S. regulators have allegedly drafted rules that would require U.S. government approval to ship AI chips anywhere outside the U.S., according to Bloomberg , citing sources. This would give the U.S. significantly more control over companies like AMD and Nvidia.
TechCrunch reached out to AMD and Nvidia for comment.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Commerce provided the following: “The Commerce Department is committed to promoting secure exports of the American tech stack. We successfully advanced exports through our historic Middle East agreements, and there are ongoing internal government discussions about formalizing that approach. Today there was reporting that we were returning to the AI diffusion rule. We will not. It was burdensome, overreaching, and disastrous.”
In these drafted rules, companies and governments outside the U.S. would have to be granted approval by the U.S. Department of Commerce to purchase these chips. The review process would vary based on the size and scale of the potential purchase, Bloomberg reported.
For example, a small order by a company outside the U.S. may warrant a basic review while a sizable order could require the company’s corresponding government to get involved.
This could, of course, all change before a final announcement or ruling, but the proposal would represent significantly more government involvement than the AI Diffusion rule instituted under President Joe Biden. The Trump administration formally rescinded Biden’s diffusion regulation last May, less than a week before it was set to go into effect.
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However, this oversight approach may end up hurting U.S. chip companies and the U.S.’s current dominance in the global AI market. If it becomes harder to source chips from the U.S., companies may increasingly turn to other sources, especially as chip companies outside the U.S. continue to develop more advanced chips.
In Nvidia’s case, the export regulations already are hurting them. The semiconductor giant has not seen the return of its customers in China after nearly a year of uncertainty of whether or not they would keep access to the AI technology.
Rebecca Szkutak Senior Reporter, Venture
Becca is a senior writer at TechCrunch that covers venture capital trends and startups. She previously covered the same beat for Forbes and the Venture Capital Journal.
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