The revelation that Nvidia and AMD agreed to surrender 15% of their Chinese semiconductor sales revenues to the U.S. government in exchange for export licenses has sparked outrage, not only because of its unprecedented nature, but also because the arrangement was kept hidden from the public until it leaked via the Financial Times. This was not a case of routine non-disclosure; it was a deliberate decision by both the corporations and the Trump administration to keep a politically volatile policy out of view until it became unavoidable.
For Nvidia and AMD, silence was a form of risk management. Admitting they had agreed to a revenue-sharing deal with Washington could have triggered shareholder backlash, legal challenges, and reputational damage. Investors would have questioned whether such concessions compromised margins and set a dangerous precedent for future political demands. Equally damaging would have been the reaction from China. News that American tech giants had agreed to funnel part of their Chinese earnings into U.S. government coffers could have been interpreted in Beijing as an affront, possibly leading to retaliation against their operations or contracts in the country.
For the Trump administration, the incentive to keep the deal quiet was even more acute. U.S. export controls are traditionally framed as a matter of principle—non-negotiable measures to safeguard sensitive technologies. Making it public that those controls could be “bought” for a price would undermine the moral and strategic rationale behind them, both at home and abroad. The revelation would also have handed political opponents an easy narrative: that national security had been auctioned off in a transactional arrangement, consistent with Trump’s reputation for deal-making but corrosive to the integrity of policy.
The timing and nature of the leak suggest it likely came from within industry or a government source uneasy with the precedent being set. Dropping the news over a weekend ensured it would dominate Monday’s headlines and trading sentiment before officials could craft a controlled response. And with the story now in the open, it has all the ingredients to trigger formal political inquiry.
The probability of congressional or Senate investigations is high. The Senate Armed Services Committee and Commerce Committee have jurisdiction over export controls and could argue that monetizing them compromises national security. In the House, the Oversight and Energy & Commerce Committees could frame the deal as an abuse of licensing authority for political or financial purposes. Should subpoenas be issued, Nvidia and AMD executives could be called to testify alongside officials from the Departments of Commerce, State, and Treasury.
An investigation would not stop at the 15% deal. Lawmakers would probe whether similar arrangements exist in other industries, whether they were applied selectively, and whether any political gain flowed from them. If such evidence surfaced, the controversy could grow into a long-running scandal—one that reshapes the debate over the limits of transactional governance and the credibility of U.S. national security policy. For Nvidia and AMD, Monday’s market volatility may prove to be just the first shockwave from a disclosure that has the potential to reverberate far beyond their earnings reports.