China Blocks NVIDIA’s RTX 5090D V2 Imports While Jensen Huang Was in Beijing
May 21, 2026 – 8:32 am
The ban on the China-only Blackwell card landed during the Trump delegation’s state visit, on which the Nvidia CEO was a late addition. Chinese AI buyers had been using the 5090D V2 as a workaround for the H200 procurement vacuum.
China stopped granting import permits for NVIDIA’s RTX 5090D V2 gaming card starting May 15th, coinciding with Jensen Huang’s visit to Beijing alongside Donald Trump’s state-visit delegation.
The ban applies to the China-only Blackwell-architecture card NVIDIA introduced last August specifically to comply with US export controls. The 5090D V2, marketed for gamers and 3D animators, was being used by Chinese AI buyers as a workaround because it retained the Blackwell architecture and could be scaled for training and inference workloads outside explicit export control frameworks.
Huang’s presence in Beijing during the ban window was a late addition to the Trump delegation, following a phone call from the president on May 13th while Air Force One refueled in Alaska.
The NVIDIA CEO joined other US tech leaders like Tim Cook and Elon Musk for formal state visit programs. The wider Chinese directive on chip procurement, under which the ban falls, has been escalating during the spring. Beijing instructed its largest AI companies to stop acquiring NVIDIA processors, including the H20 and RTX Pro 6000D, claiming that Huawei’s Ascend line and Cambricon’s Siyuan accelerators now match these products in relevant workloads.
Alibaba’s T-Head Zhenwu M890 launch is within this same procurement directive context. The company’s executive claimed "scaled mass production" for the domestic alternative.
US framing of China’s procurement policy has been unusually direct, with Trump stating earlier this month that China is blocking H200 purchases despite US export licenses being approved. This positions Beijing’s procurement decisions as the primary constraint on NVIDIA’s China revenue line rather than US export controls.
The Trump-Xi Beijing summit on AI guardrails left procurement and licensing questions on the agenda. The 5090D V2 ban is the first visible enforcement step since the summit ended.
While commercially, NVIDIA guided to $91bn in Q2 revenue against a $86.84bn consensus, the impact of the ban is significant. The 5090D V2 contributes only a low-single-digit percentage to quarterly revenue but the signaling effect carries weight. The RTX 5090 global card has separately surged to $5,300 on the Korean grey market due to procurement pressure.
NVIDIA declined to issue a public statement beyond confirming Huang’s participation in the delegation. China’s customs administration has yet to publish a formal notice describing the permit decision.