AFP USA

Harvard is due to hold its annual graduation ceremony Thursday as a federal judge considers the legality of punitive measures taken against the university by President Donald Trump that threaten to overshadow festivities.Thursday’s commencement comes as Trump piles unprecedented pressure on Harvard, seeking to ban it from having foreign students, shredding its contracts with the federal government, slashing its multibillion-dollar grants and challenging its tax-free status.Harvard is challenging all of the measures in court.The Ivy League institution has continually drawn Trump’s ire while publicly rejecting his administration’s repeated demands to give up control of recruitment, curricula and research choices. The government claims Harvard tolerates antisemitism and liberal bias.”Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect, and all they’re doing is getting in deeper and deeper,” Trump said Wednesday.Harvard president Alan Garber, who told National Public Radio on Tuesday that “sometimes they don’t like what we represent,” may speak to address the ceremony.Garber has acknowledged that Harvard does have issues with antisemitism, and has struggled to ensure that a variety of viewpoints can be safely heard on campus.”What is perplexing is the measures that they have taken to address these (issues) don’t even hit the same people that they believe are causing the problems,” Garber told NPR.Basketball star and human rights campaigner Kareem Abdul-Jabbar addressed the class of 2025 for Class Day on Wednesday.”When a tyrannical administration tried to bully and threaten Harvard to give up their academic freedom and destroy free speech, Dr. Alan Garber rejected the illegal and immoral pressures,” he said, comparing Garber to civil rights icon Rosa Parks.Madeleine Riskin-Kutz, a Franco-American classics and linguistics student at Harvard, said some students were planning individual acts of protest against the Trump policies.”The atmosphere (is) that just continuing on joyfully with the processions and the fanfare is in itself an act of resistance,” the 22-year-old said.- Legal fightback -Garber has led the fight-back in US academia after Trump targeted several prestigious universities including Columbia which made sweeping concessions to the administration in an effort to restore $400 million of withdrawn federal grants.A federal judge in Boston will on Thursday hear arguments over Trump’s effort to exclude Harvard from the main system for sponsoring and hosting foreign students.Judge Allison Burroughs quickly paused the policy which would have ended Harvard’s ability to bring students from abroad who currently make up 27 percent of its student body. Harvard has since been flooded with inquiries from foreign students seeking to transfer to other institutions, Maureen Martin, director of immigration services, said Wednesday. “Many international students and scholars are reporting significant emotional distress that is affecting their mental health and making it difficult to focus on their studies,” Martin wrote in a court filing.Retired immigration judge Patricia Sheppard protested outside Harvard Yard on Wednesday, sporting a black judicial robe and brandishing a sign reading “for the rule of law.””We have to look at why some of these actions have been filed, and it does not seem to me seemly that a president would engage in certain actions as retribution,” she told AFP.Ahead of the graduation ceremony, members of the Harvard band sporting distinctive crimson blazers and brandishing their instruments filed through the narrow streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts — home to the elite school, America’s oldest university.A huge stage had been erected and hundreds of chairs laid out in a grassy precinct that was closed off to the public for the occasion.Students wearing black academic gowns also toured through Cambridge with photo-taking family members, AFP correspondents saw.

A US federal court blocked most of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs from going into effect, boosting markets on Thursday even as the White House appealed against the decision by “unelected judges.”The opinion marks a significant setback to Trump as he bids to redraw the US trading relationship with the world by forcing governments to the negotiating table through tough new tariffs.Trump’s global trade war has roiled financial markets with a stop-start rollout of import levies aimed at punishing economies that sell more to the United States than they buy.Trump argued that the resulting trade deficits and the threat posed by the influx of drugs constituted a “national emergency” that justified widespread tariffs.But the three-judge Court of International Trade ruled Wednesday that Trump had overstepped his authority, barring most of the duties announced since he took office in January.The White House slammed the ruling, arguing that “unelected judges” have no right to weigh in on Trump’s handling of the issue.”President Trump pledged to put America first, and the administration is committed to using every lever of executive power to address this crisis and restore American greatness,” Trump’s spokesman Kush Desai said.Attorneys for the Trump administration promptly filed to appeal against the ruling Wednesday.- China: ‘cancel wrongful tariffs’ -The ruling comes as Trump has used the tariffs as leverage in trade negotiations with friends and foes, including the European Union and China.Beijing — which was hit by 145 percent tariffs before they were sharply reduced to give space for negotiations — reacted to the court ruling by saying the United States should scrap the levies.”China urges the United States to heed the rational voices from the international community and domestic stakeholders and fully cancel the wrongful unilateral tariff measures,” said commerce ministry spokeswoman He Yongqian. Japan’s tariffs envoy Ryosei Akazawa said as he left for a fourth round of talks in Washington that Tokyo — reeling from tariffs on cars — would study the ruling.Trump unveiled sweeping import duties on nearly all trading partners on April 2, at a baseline 10 percent, plus steeper levies on dozens of economies, including China and the European Union.The ruling also quashes duties that Trump imposed on Canada, Mexico and China separately using emergency powers.Some of the turmoil was calmed after he paused the larger tariffs for 90 days and suspended other duties, pending negotiations with individual countries and blocs.Asian markets rallied on Thursday and US futures pointed to early gains, but Europe was mixed, with London in the red while Paris and Frankfurt rose.The ruling “throws into disarray several trade deals that have already been agreed, and those that are still in the negotiation phase,” said Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB brokerage firm.- ‘Extraordinary threat’ -The federal trade court was ruling in two separate cases — brought by businesses and a coalition of state governments — arguing that the president had violated Congress’s power of the purse.”The question in the two cases before the court is whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (“IEEPA”) delegates these powers to the president in the form of authority to impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world,” the three-judge panel wrote in an unsigned opinion.”The court does not read IEEPA to confer such unbounded authority and sets aside the challenged tariffs imposed thereunder.” The judges stated that any interpretation of the IEEPA that “delegates unlimited tariff authority is unconstitutional.” The IEEPA authorizes the president to impose necessary economic sanctions during an emergency “to combat an unusual and extraordinary threat,” the bench said.The ruling gave the White House 10 days to complete the bureaucratic process of halting the tariffs.Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the ruling confirmed that “these tariffs are an illegal abuse of executive power.””Trump’s declaration of a bogus national emergency to justify his global trade war was an absurd and unlawful use of IEEPA,” he said.White House aide Stephen Miller took to social media to decry a “judicial coup” that he said was “out of control.”burs-stu-lth/ach 

Harvard University has been flooded with requests from foreign students to transfer to other institutions as US President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to ban it from hosting international scholars, a staff member said Wednesday.”Too many international students to count have inquired about the possibility of transferring to another institution,” Maureen Martin, director of immigration services, wrote in a court filing.Trump has upended the United States’ reputation among foreign students, who number around one million, as he presses a campaign against US universities he sees as obstructing his “Make America Great Again” populist agenda.He has blocked Harvard from hosting international scholars in a maneuver being challenged legally, targeted non-citizen campus activists for deportation, and most recently suspended student visa processing across the board.The president’s crackdown has prompted “profound fear, concern, and confusion” among students and staff at the elite university, which has been “inundated with questions from current international students and scholars about their status and options”, Martin wrote.More than 27 percent of Harvard’s enrollment was made up of foreign students in the 2024-25 academic year, according to university data.”Many international students and scholars are reporting significant emotional distress that is affecting their mental health and making it difficult to focus on their studies,” Martin wrote in the filing.Some were afraid to attend their graduation ceremonies this week or had canceled travel plans for fear of being refused re-entry into the United States, she added.She said that a handful of domestic students at Harvard had also “expressed serious interest” in transferring elsewhere because they did not want to attend a university with no international students.A judge last week suspended the government’s move to block Harvard from enrolling and hosting foreign students after the Ivy League school sued, calling the action unconstitutional.A hearing into the case was scheduled for Thursday.At least 10 foreign students or scholars at Harvard had their visa applications refused immediately after the block on foreign students was announced, including students whose visa applications had already been approved, Martin wrote.”My current understanding is that the visa applications that were refused or revoked following the Revocation Notice have not yet been approved or reinstated,” despite a judge suspending the move, she said.

Billionaire Elon Musk has said he is leaving his role in the US government, in which he was tasked with reducing federal spending, shortly after his first major break with Donald Trump over the president’s signature spending bill.While classified as a “special government employee” and “senior advisor to the president,” the South African-born tycoon has left indelible marks on American politics as Trump’s most visible backer.- The ‘Nazi’ salute -Being Trump’s right-hand man took on a new meaning when the world’s richest person made headlines by dramatically throwing out his arm — twice — at a rally celebrating Trump’s January 20 inauguration.Standing at a podium bearing the presidential seal, Musk’s right arm was straight, his hand open, his palm facing down. Historians agreed with Democratic politicians that the sharp gesture looked exactly like a Nazi salute.The Tesla boss — whose electric vehicles were soon dubbed “swasticars” by critics — dismissed the claims, posting on his X social media platform: “The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”Whatever the display meant, Nazi-related jokes and memes dominated public reactions to the day meant to mark Trump’s triumphant return to office.- Endorsing Germany’s extreme-right -Hot off his salute shock, Musk participated virtually at a January rally for Germany’s anti-immigration, ultra-nationalist AfD party.Musktold the crowd “you really are the best hope” for Germany and urged them to be “proud of German culture and German values.”His endorsement of the AfD shook mainstream German parties, which said they viewed it as foreign interference by Trump’s advisor. Vandals burned four Teslas in the streets of Berlin afterward.Despite record gains at the polls, AfD ultimately took second place in the election behind Germany’s conservatives. – Brings kid to work -Dressed down in MAGA hats andt-shirts, Musk became a near-constant presence in the White House. For a while, so did his four-year-old son named X.During Musk’s first appearance before reporters since his arrival in Washington to run DOGE, the child was trotted out and Trump said: “This is X and he’s a great guy.”The boy was filmed picking his nose while his father boasted about his cost-cutting exploits while standing next to the Oval Office’s Resolute Desk.- Brings chainsaw to budget -Unelected and unconfirmed by the Senate, Musk has repeatedly bashed the “unelected, fourth unconstitutional branch of government, which is the bureaucracy” and immediately made brutal cuts to the federal workforce and budget.To illustrate his management style, Musk donned sunglasses and brandished a chainsaw on stage at a conservative get-together in Washington.It was handed to him — not turned on — by right-wing Argentine President Javier Milei, who made the machine a symbol of slashing bureaucracy and state spending in his own country.- Overshadowing Trump’s cabinet -At Trump’s first cabinet meeting on February 26, Musk had a starring role even though he is not part of the cabinet. He stood looming near a doorway, wearing a t-shirt with the words “Tech Support” across the chest as the cabinet met.Even without a literal seat at the table Musk, who helped bankroll Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, overshadowed the country’s most powerful officials.Trump downplayed this tension shortly before the meeting, posting on his social media platform: “ALL CABINET MEMBERS ARE EXTREMELY HAPPY WITH ELON.”- Trump the Tesla salesman -With Musk’s Tesla car company taking a battering on the stock market and sales dropping sharply, and with vandals targeting his brand, the White House hosted a highly publicized test drive to boost Tesla’s reputation. With a Tesla Cybertruck and a Model S parked on the South Portico, Trump and Musk mounted a sales pitch.Trump even said he had purchased one.The stunt didn’t ultimately turn around Tesla’s plummeting sales, with the electric vehicle maker reporting a 71 percent drop in first-quarter profits.- Fails to sway court election -Money can’t buy you everything, Musk discovered, after pouring $25 million into the most expensive court race in US history to try to get a pro-Trump Republican judge elected to Wisconsin’s Supreme Court.Musk paid voters $100 to sign a petition opposing “activist judges” and even handed out $1 million checks to voters, beseeching the public to select the conservative judge. The court’s docket was packed with precedent-setting cases over abortion and reproductive rights, the strength of public sector unions, voting rules and congressional district boundaries.The US state instead chose a liberal judge by a wide margin in April, dismaying the billionaire — who had spent roughly $277 million in 2024 in the national race to help get Trump elected.- Tariff dissenter -After Trump announced his sweeping US tariffs, deeply affecting major trading partners China and the European Union, Musk made the case for a free-trade zone between the United States and Europe.This clashes with Trump’s trade policy.Shortly after, he called Trump’s economic advisor Peter Navarro, a longtime advocate for trade barriers, “dumber than a sack of bricks.”Navarro had taken aim at Tesla, saying the carmaker mostly sourced assembled major components from factories in Asia.Musk retorted with studies he said showed “Tesla has the most American-made cars.”White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt tried to play down the public feud, saying that “boys will be boys.”- Big, Beautiful Bill -Musk said he was “disappointed” by Trump’s divisive mega-bill, which offers sprawling tax relief and spending cuts, in a rare split with the Republican president.The tech tycoon said the “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” — which passed the US House last week and now moves to the Senate — would increase the deficit and undermine the work of DOGE, which has fired tens of thousands of people.Critics warn the legislation will gut health care and balloon the national deficit by as much as $4 trillion over a decade.”I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk told CBS News.Musk announced he was quitting his US government role shortly after.

Two human traffickers were sentenced Wednesday for their roles in a smuggling operation that resulted in the 2022 deaths of four Indian nationals, including a three-year-old and an 11-year-old, the US Department of Justice said.Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, 29, was sentenced to over 10 years in prison for organizing logistics and co-conspirator Steve Anthony Shand, 50, was sentenced to over six years for picking up migrants in the United States.A jury convicted the duo for their work in a “large-scale human smuggling operation that brought Indian nationals to Canada on fraudulent student visas and then smuggled them into the United States,” justice officials said.In January 2022, amid severe weather, Patel and Shand attempted to smuggle 11 Indian nationals from Canada into the United States on foot, the DOJ said, adding the recorded wind chill temperature was -37.8 degrees Celsius (-36 degrees Fahrenheit). A US Border Patrol agent found Shand’s van stuck in the Minnesota snow, where Shand claimed there were no other people stranded out in the cold.But five more people emerged from the fields, including one who was airlifted to a hospital for lifesaving care. Shand was arrested along with two migrants. But the family of four was not found until the Royal Canadian Mounted Police found their frozen bodies in an isolated area in Canada. “The boy was wrapped in a blanket with his father’s frozen glove covering his face,” the DOJ said.”Every time I think about this case I think about this family — including two beautiful little children — who the defendants left to freeze to death in a blizzard,” said Acting US Attorney Lisa D. Kirkpatrick. 

US President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday canceled a $590 million contract with Moderna to develop an avian flu vaccine, the US biotech company said.It marked the latest move against vaccines by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who has spent decades promoting misinformation about immunization. The contract, announced on January 17 — three days before Trump took office — was for an mRNA vaccine targeting the H5N1 influenza strain, which has been circulating in birds and cattle. Experts have warned the virus could jump to humans and spark a pandemic.American pharmaceutical and biotechnology company Moderna disclosed the news as it announced positive results from an early stage clinical trial of 300 people designed to test safety and immune response.”While the termination of funding from HHS adds uncertainty, we are pleased by the robust immune response and safety profile observed in this interim analysis of the Phase 1/2 study of our H5 avian flu vaccine and we will explore alternative paths forward for the program,” said CEO Stephane Bancel in a statement. “These clinical data in pandemic influenza underscore the critical role mRNA technology has played as a countermeasure to emerging health threats.”The statement added Moderna would “explore alternatives” for funding the development and manufacturing of the vaccine.Dr. Ashish Jha, a public health expert who served as former president Joe Biden’s Covid-19 response coordinator, reacted with dismay.”The attack on mRNA vaccines is beyond absurd,” he posted on X. “It was President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed that gave us mRNA vaccines.”

Harvard University has agreed to settle a deeply emotional dispute over who has the rights to images of enslaved Africans taken in 1850 by a professor who sought to support a racist theory.The daguerrotypes, a precursor to modern photographs, are considered to be the earliest known images of Black American slaves, who were posed nude and semi-nude “without consent, dignity or compensation,” a 2019 lawsuit stated.The Cambridge institution has agreed to relinquish the images and has offered plaintiff Tamara Lanier a confidential monetary settlement.Lanier says she is a descendant of a slave known only by his first name, Renty, who was photographed nude, and his daughter Delia, who was photographed nude from the waist up, in images commissioned by Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz as supposed evidence of Black inferiority.The images were taken in South Carolina, and Lanier is advocating for them to be transferred to the International African American Museum there. Lanier accused the university of using them for advertising and commercial purposes, and denounced the use of Renty’s image on a cover of a $40 anthropology book it published in 2017.”Since Black Americans were first brought to this country in chains, our pain and trauma have been exploited for capitalistic gain,” said Lanier. Lanier claimed rights to the images 15 years ago, but Harvard has long-disputed the claim that she is Renty’s great-great-great-granddaughter.”As descendants of slaves, familial history and well-documented genealogy are a luxury that many Black Americans do not have,” Lanier said, who relied on her family’s oral history to determine the connection in lineage.In a statement on the settlement, Harvard said they have “long been eager” to steward “the daguerrotypes in a responsible manner.”In his time Agassiz, a Swiss-born biologist, was a renowned scientist who worked in geology. But Lanier’s attorney Ben Crump said Agassiz also supported polygenism, which was “used to justify both the ongoing enslavement of Black people prior to the Civil War and their segregation afterward.”The daguerrotypes were in the possession of Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology to date. “Harvard played a role in the darkest chapter in American history,” Lanier said. “This is a small step in the right direction towards fully acknowledging that history and working to rectify it.” The stain of Agassiz’s work has been controversial elsewhere, too. He had an elementary school named after him near Harvard — but local residents successfully demanded the name be changed to honor a long-serving Black principal Maria Louise Baldwin in 2002, citing his scientific racism.

Internet giants are diving deeper into e-commerce with digital aides that know shoppers’ likes, let them virtually try clothes on, hunt for deals and even place orders.The rise of virtual personal shoppers springs from generative artificial intelligence (AI) being put to work in “agents” specializing in specific tasks and given autonomy to complete them independently.”This is basically the next evolution of shopping experiences,” said CFRA Research analyst Angelo Zino. Google last week unveiled shopping features built into a new “AI Mode”.It can take a person’s own photo and meld it with that of a skirt, shirt or other piece of clothing spotted online, showing how it will look on them.The AI adjusts the clothing size to fit, accounting for how fabrics drape, according to Google head of advertising and commerce Vidhya Srinivasan.Shoppers can then set the price they would pay and leave the AI to relentlessly browse the internet for a deal — alerting the shopper when it finds one, and asking if it should buy using Google’s payment platform. “They’re taking on Amazon a little bit,” Techsponential analyst Avi Greengart said of Google.The tool is also a way to make money from AI by increasing online traffic and opportunities to show ads, Greengart added.The Silicon Valley tech titan did not respond to a query regarding whether it is sharing in revenue from shopping transactions.- Bartering bots? -OpenAI added a shopping feature to ChatGPT earlier this year, enabling the chatbot to respond to requests with product suggestions, consumer reviews and links to merchant websites.Perplexity AI late last year began letting subscribers pay for online purchases without leaving its app.Amazon in April added a “Buy for Me” mode to its Rufus digital assistant, allowing users to command it to make purchases at retailer websites off Amazon’s platform.Walmart head of technology Hari Vasudev recently spoke about adding an AI agent to the retail behemoth’s online shopping portal, while also working with partners to make sure their digital agents keep Walmart products in mind.Global payment networks Visa and Mastercard in April each said their technical systems were modernized to allow payment transactions by digital agents.”As AI agents start to take over the bulk of product discovery and the decision-making process, retailers must consider how to optimize for this new layer of AI shoppers,” said Elise Watson of Clarkston Consulting.Retailers are likely to be left groping in the dark when it comes to what makes a product attractive to AI agents, according to Watson.- Knowing the customer -Analyst Zino does not expect AI shoppers to cause an e-commerce industry upheaval, but he does see the technology benefitting Google and Meta.Not only do the Internet rivals have massive amounts of data about their users, but they are also among frontrunners in the AI race.”They probably have more information on the consumer than anyone else out there,” Zino said of Google and Meta.Tech company access to data about users hits the hot-button issue of online privacy and who should control personal information.Google plans to refine consumer profiles based on what people search for and promises that shoppers will need to authorize access to additional information such as email or app use.Trusting a chatbot with one’s buying decisions may spook some people, and while the technology might be in place the legal and ethical framework for it is not.”The agent economy is here,” said PSE Consulting managing director Chris Jones.”The next phase of e-commerce will depend on whether we can trust machines to buy on our behalf.”

Billionaire Elon Musk on Wednesday announced he was leaving his role in US government, intended to reduce federal spending, shortly after his first major break with President Donald Trump over his signature spending bill.”As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President Donald Trump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” he wrote on his social media platform X.”The DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government,” he added.The South African-born tech tycoon had said Trump’s bill would increase the deficit and undermine the work of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has fired tens of thousands of people.Musk — who was a constant presence at Trump’s side before pulling back to focus on his Space X and Tesla businesses — also complained that DOGE had become a “whipping boy” for dissatisfaction with the administration.”I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said in an interview with CBS News, an excerpt of which aired late Tuesday.Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” — which passed the US House last week and now moves to the Senate — offers sprawling tax relief and spending cuts and is the centerpiece of his domestic agenda.But critics warn it will decimate health care and balloon the national deficit by as much as $4 trillion over a decade.”A bill can be big, or it can be beautiful. But I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion,” Musk said in the interview, which will be aired in full on Sunday.The White House sought to play down any differences over US government spending, without directly naming Musk.”The Big Beautiful Bill is NOT an annual budget bill,” Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said on Musk’s social network, X, after the tech titan’s comments aired.All DOGE cuts would have to be carried out through a separate bill targeting the federal bureaucracy, according to US Senate rules, Miller added.But Musk’s comments represented a rare split with the Republican president whom he helped propel back to power, as the largest donor to his 2024 election campaign.- ‘Whipping boy’ -Trump tasked Musk with cutting government spending as head of DOGE, but after a feverish start Musk announced in late April he was mostly stepping back to run his companies again.Musk complained in a separate interview with the Washington Post that DOGE, which operated out of the White House with a staff of young technicians, had become a lightning rod for criticism.”DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” Musk told the newspaper at the Starbase launch site in Texas ahead of Space X’s latest launch on Tuesday.”Something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.”Musk blamed entrenched US bureaucracy for DOGE’s failure to achieve all of its goals — although reports say his domineering style and lack of familiarity with the currents of Washington politics were also major factors.”The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized,” he said. “I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in DC, to say the least.”Musk has previously admitted that he did not achieve all his goals with DOGE even though tens of thousands of people were removed from government payrolls and several departments were gutted or shut down.Musk’s own businesses suffered in the meantime.Protesters against the cost-cutting targeted Tesla dealerships while arsonists even torched a few of the electric vehicles, and the firm’s profits slumped.”People were burning Teslas. Why would you do that? That’s really uncool,” Musk told the Post.Musk has also been focusing on Space X after a series of fiery setbacks to his dreams of colonizing Mars — the latest of which came on Tuesday when its prototype Starship exploded over the Indian Ocean.The tycoon last week also said he would pull back from spending his fortune on politics, having spent around a quarter of a billion dollars to support Trump.

Nvidia on Wednesday reported earnings that topped market expectations, with a $4.5 billion hit from US export controls being less than the Silicon Valley chip juggernaut had feared.However, Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress warned in an earnings call that export constraints are expected to cost the AI chip titan about $8 billion in the current quarter.Nvidia in April notified regulators that it expected a $5.5 billion hit in the recently-ended quarter due to a new US licensing requirement on the primary chip it can legally sell in China.US officials had told Nvidia it must obtain licenses to export its H20 chips to China because of concerns they may be used in supercomputers there, the company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.The new licensing rule applies to Nvidia graphics processing units, or GPUs, with bandwidth similar to that of the H20.”China is one of the world’s largest AI markets and a springboard to global success,” Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said in an earnings call.”The platform that wins China is positioned to lead globally; however, the $50 billion China market is effectively closed to us.”Nvidia cannot dial back the capabilities of its H20 chips any further to comply with US export constraints, winding up forced to write off billions of dollars on inventory that can’t be sold or repurposed, according to Huang.”The US has based its policy on the assumption that China cannot make AI chips,” Huang said.”That assumption was always questionable, and now it’s clearly wrong.”China’s AI is moving on without Nvidia technology, while that country’s chip-makers innovate products and ramp up operations, according to Huang.”The question is not whether China will have AI; it already does,” he said.”The question is whether one of the world’s largest markets will run on American platforms.”The new requirements resulted in Nvidia incurring a charge of $4.5 billion in the quarter, associated with H20 excess inventory and purchase obligations “as demand for H20 diminished,” the chip-maker said in an earnings report.US export constraints stopped Nvidia from bringing in an additional $2.5 billion worth of H20 revenue in the quarter, according to the company.Nvidia said it made a profit of $18.8 billion on revenue of $44.1 billion, causing shares to rise more than four percent in after-market trades.- Hot demand -Huang said demand for the company’s AI-powering technology remains strong, and a new Blackwell NVL72 AI supercomputer referred to as a “thinking machine” is in full-scale production.”Countries around the world are recognizing AI as essential infrastructure — just like electricity and the internet — and Nvidia stands at the center of this profound transformation,” Huang said.Nvidia high-end GPUs are in hot demand from tech giants building data centers to power artificial intelligence.The company said its data center division revenue in the quarter was $39.1 billion, up 10 percent from the same period last year.The market had expected more from the unit, however.”Nvidia beat expectations again but in a market where maintaining this dominance is becoming more challenging,” said Emarketer analyst Jacob Bourne.”The China export restrictions underscore the immediate pressure from geopolitical headwinds but Nvidia also faces mounting competitive pressure as rivals like AMD gain ground,” said Emarketer analyst Jacob Bourne.Revenue in Nvidia’s gaming chip business hit a record high of $3.8 billion, leaping 48 percent and eclipsing forecasts.The AI boom has propelled Nvidia’s stock price, which has regained much of the ground lost in a steep sell-off in January triggered by the sudden success of DeepSeek.China’s DeepSeek unveiled its R1 chatbot, which it claims can match the capacity of top US AI products for a fraction of their costs.”The broader concern is that trade tensions and potential tariff impacts on data center expansion could create headwinds for AI chip demand in upcoming quarters,” analyst Bourne said of Nvidia.