chip

Dutch chipmaker Nexperia has suspended wafer shipments to its Chinese assembly plant in Dongguan, a move that could intensify the semiconductor supply crunch already rattling automakers worldwide.

The suspension, revealed in a company letter dated October 29 and signed by interim CEO Stefan Tilger, followed the Chinese unit’s failure to meet contractual payment terms. It comes amid escalating tensions after the Dutch government seized control of Nexperia from its Chinese owner, Wingtech Technology, in late September, citing national security and governance concerns.

Why It Matters

The halt threatens to disrupt automotive and electronics supply chains at a critical time. Around 70% of Nexperia’s chips produced in the Netherlands are packaged in China, meaning the freeze could ripple through global manufacturing networks.

The dispute also underscores the deepening fractures in global tech supply chains, where national security concerns and trade controls increasingly shape corporate decisions. With the U.S., China, and Europe tightening technology restrictions, Nexperia’s situation reflects the mounting geopolitical tug-of-war over semiconductor control.

Nexperia (Netherlands): Seeking to maintain operations while asserting independence from Chinese influence.

Wingtech Technology (China): The former owner now sidelined after Dutch government intervention.

Dutch Government: Exercising sovereignty over critical tech assets amid Western security coordination.

Chinese Ministry of Commerce: Blocking Nexperia’s chip exports from China in retaliation.

Global Automakers: Companies like Stellantis and Nissan are monitoring potential production halts as chip prices soar.

What’s Next

Nexperia says it is developing alternative supply routes to support its global customers but has not disclosed details. The Dongguan facility remains operational, though limited by the wafer cutoff.

Analysts expect further trade retaliation from Beijing, potentially deepening the rift between European and Chinese semiconductor ecosystems. Automakers warn of possible shortages by mid-November if shipments do not resume.

Implications

This episode highlights how state intervention in technology firms is reshaping global supply chains. The Dutch government’s takeover framed as a national security move signals Europe’s growing alignment with U.S. export controls targeting Chinese tech entities.

In the short term, the halt could spike chip prices and strain automotive production, particularly in Asia and Europe. Long term, it may accelerate a strategic decoupling between Western and Chinese semiconductor manufacturing bases.

Politically, this marks a test of Europe’s resolve to protect critical tech sectors even at the cost of trade friction with Beijing.

With information from an exclusive Reuters report.

Published on 29/10/2025 – 11:09 GMT+1
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Nvidia shares continued their dramatic rise this week as investors banked on an easing of semiconductor trade restrictions between the US and China.

Ahead of a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, US President Donald Trump said he planned to discuss Nvidia’s advanced Blackwell artificial intelligence chip with Xi.

“We’ll be speaking about Blackwell, it’s the super duper chip,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

The president didn’t elaborate on specific policy aims, although he said he was “very optimistic” about the meeting with his Chinese counterpart.

By around 11:00 CET, Nvidia shares had jumped over 3% in pre-market trading, bringing the firm closer to a $5 trillion market capitalisation.

Semiconductors have been a key point of contention between the US and China as both nations seek to lead on advanced technologies such as AI.

The tiny chips, used to power a range of electronic devices from smartphones to medical equipment, are essential to this ambition. Since 2022, the US has therefore restricted Nvidia’s sales of advanced chips to China for national security reasons.

Trump has flip-flopped on export controls since his arrival in the White House, first restricting and then approving sales of Nvidia’s H20 AI chip to China. Nvidia designed the H20 specifically for the Chinese market to comply with Biden-era export curbs, although the Trump administration previously said it was concerned the tech could be used for military purposes.

With regard to the Blackwell processor, Trump suggested months ago that he would consider allowing Nvidia to export a downgraded version of the chip to China.

Progress on such a proposal would come as a relief to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who has long criticised US restrictions. Huang has notably argued that such curbs are boosting China’s AI capabilities as the Chinese market is forced to become less reliant on US products.

It seems that such logic is already understood in Beijing, even as the US softens its stance. After Washington gave the green light to H20 exports, China’s regulator banned the country’s biggest tech companies from buying Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips.

“The president has licensed us to ship to China, but China has blocked us from being able to ship to China,” Huang said at a Nvidia event this week in Washington. “They’ve made it very clear that they don’t want Nvidia to be there right now.”

In a document released by Beijing on Tuesday, the Communist party reiterated the importance of self-sufficiency, calling for “extraordinary measures” to achieve “decisive breakthroughs” in technologies such as semiconductors.

“The most important factor in promoting high-quality development is to accelerate high-level scientific and technological self-reliance,” Xi said in a speech released by state news agency Xinhua.

While it’s possible that Chinese restrictions on Nvidia chips could be a long-lasting policy, experts have suggested that the move may be a bargaining chip in trade negotiations with Washington.

Such policy U-turns are creating uncertainty for investors despite the fact that Nvidia shares have risen roughly 50% this year, driven higher by AI ambitions.

Poker chip trays that can secretly read cards.

Glasses that can detect card markings.

Rigged underground games run by the New York mafia.

NBA figures exchanging insider information as part of illegal betting schemes.

These are some of the wild allegations filed in two criminal complaints this week by federal prosecutors in one of the most sweeping and sensational betting scandals in recent professional sports history.

At the heart of one of the cases, prosecutors charged several figures using private insider NBA information, such as when players would sit out, to help others profit in leveraged bets online.

But the allegations go far deeper, including a connection to the Lakers, the mob and more.

Here are four key allegations:

1. High-roller games with high-tech cheating

Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, who played with the Clippers for two seasons and later was a member of Clippers coach Ty Lue’s staff before earning the Trail Blazers head coaching job, is charged with rigging underground poker games that three of New York’s Mafia families backed, authorities said.

Billups and Damon Jones, a retired NBA player, according to one of the two indictments revealed Thursday, were used to attract wealthy players to the games and were referred to as “Face Cards.” But according to the federal indictment, the two were part of the cheating teams. In exchange for taking part in the games, the “Face Cards” received part of the winnings.

The teams, according to court filings, used rigged shuffling machines that read deck cards and predicted which player on the table would have the best poker hand and relayed that information to someone, referred to as the operator. That person then relayed that information to one member of the cheating team on the table, known as the “Quarterback,” or “Driver,” according to court filings.

In some cases, the cheating teams used poker chip trays that could secretly read the cards on the table. In other cases, players used glasses that could detect special markings on the cards.

U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella of Brooklyn said at a press conference said the defendants used “special contact lenses or eyeglasses that could read pre-marked cards” and tables that “could read cards face down on the table … because of the X-ray technology.”

He cited “other cheating technologies, such as poker chip tray analyzers, which is a poker chip tray that secretly reads cards using a hidden camera,.”

“Anyone who knows Chauncey Billups knows he is a man of integrity; men of integrity do not cheat and defraud others,” Chris Heywood, Billups’ attorney, said in a statement Tuesday night. “To believe that Chauncey Billups did what the federal government is accusing him of is to believe that he would risk his Hall-of-Fame legacy, his reputation, and his freedom. He would not jeopardize those things for anything, let alone a card game.”

2. Alleged mob ties

The games in the New York area were backed by three of New York’s organized crime families: the Bonanno, Gambino and Genovese Mafia families, authorities said. According to the complaint, at least a dozen of the 31 defendants were associates or members of those three families.

Among those named in the indictment was Joseph Lanni, identified as a captain in the Gambino crime family. Known as “Joe Brooklyn,” Lanni was also named as a defendant in a 2023 racketeering, extortion and witness retaliation indictment, where members and associates of the Gambino family were accused of trying to take control of New York’s carting and demolition industries.

Last week, Lanni pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy, according to court records.

3. A tip about LeBron James

Federal prosecutors allege that between December 2022 and March 2024, the defendants , used inside information to defraud bettors, including which players would be sitting out games and when players would “pull themselves out of games early for purported injuries or illnesses.”

Damon Jones, a retired NBA player and friend of LeBron James is accused of inside information for sports betting related to the Lakers and specifically “Player 3,” a prominent NBA player.

Although the indictment does not name the player — the date referenced in 2023 when the player sat out matches when James sat out against the Milwaukee Bucks due to ankle soreness. According to the indictment, Jones, a friend of James, profited from the non-public information.

“Get a big bet on Milwaukee tonight before the information is out!” Jones texted an unnamed co-conspirator, according to the indictment. “[Player 3] is out tonight.”

On Thursday, the Lakers declined to comment on the investigation. A person close to LeBron James told The Times that the Lakers star didn’t know that Jones was allegedly selling injury information to gamblers placing bets. Neither James or the Lakers have been accused of any wrongdoing.

3. A ‘shady’ injury

According to the indictment, when Terry Rozier was playing for the Hornets, he told others he was planning to leave the game early with a “supposed injury,” allowing others to place wagers that raked in thousands of dollars, New York Police Commissioner Jennifer Tisch said.

Rozier and other defendants allegedly provided that information to other co-conspirators in exchange for either a flat fee or a share of betting profits.

Another game involving Rozier that has been in question was played a day earlier, on March 23, 2023, between the Hornets and the New Orleans Pelicans. Rozier played the first 9 minutes and 36 seconds of that game — and not only did not return that night, citing a foot issue, but also did not play again that season.

Posts still online from March 23, 2023, show that some bettors were furious with sportsbooks that evening when it became evident that Rozier was not going to return, with many turning to social media to say that something “shady” had gone on regarding the prop bets involving his stats for that night.

China railed for years against the United States’s bid to force the sale of TikTok, once accusing Washington of demonstrating “robbers’ logic” in response to the platform’s success.

Now, Beijing is touting talks on how the video-sharing platform’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, might relinquish ownership of its US operations.

The turnaround has raised questions about what China might expect in return, with analysts suggesting that Beijing has come to view TikTok as a useful bargaining chip to win concessions on more pressing issues.

China has yet to confirm a deal on TikTok, which Washington has cast as a propaganda tool of Beijing and a threat to privacy, and there are numerous outstanding questions about what a sale would entail.

Most crucial of all is the question of who would own and control TikTok’s recommendations algorithm, which has been credited with powering the platform’s explosive popularity in the US, where it claims more than 170 million users.

Under Chinese export controls introduced in 2020, companies are prohibited from transferring sensitive technologies like TikTok’s algorithm without government approval.

As recently as last month, the state-run China Daily warned in an editorial that the export restrictions presented a “red line for the TikTok transaction”.

If China is willing to hand over control of the algorithm, it will expect major concessions on such issues as trade, curbs on Chinese tech, and Taiwan, said Dexter Roberts, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub.

“If anything changed on the Chinese side that makes them now more willing to do a deal on TikTok, I think it’s because they sense that they can get a lot more out of the Trump administration than they originally thought, and they may be contemplating using TikTok as a bargaining lever,” Roberts told Al Jazeera.

On the US side, President Donald Trump seems eager to reach an agreement on TikTok quickly as part of an effort to lock down his first face-to-face meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping since returning to the White House, Roberts said.

“And in order to get that sit-down and that ‘deal,’ it seems as if he’s willing to give a lot in return,” he said.

While both China and the US have hailed the prospects of a resolution to the standoff over TikTok, the sides have offered substantially different accounts of where things stand.

In a briefing on Monday, an unnamed senior White House official was quoted as telling media outlets that the Trump administration was confident that China was on board with a deal that would see TikTok’s algorithm licensed out to a new joint venture in the US.

Under the terms of the deal, Texas-based Oracle, whose billionaire cofounder Larry Ellison is a staunch backer of Israel, would oversee and retrain the licensed algorithm using US data, according to reports of the official’s comment.

Since the start of the 2023 war in Gaza, in which Israel’s attacks have killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, Ellison has committed cybersecurity and cloud infrastructure support to Israel.

Oracle’s growing role in TikTok’s future comes after several Republican lawmakers have, since 2023, accused the platform of promoting pro-Palestinian content.

The latest White House briefing came after Trump, who has repeatedly extended the deadline for forcing a sale of the platform, said on Friday that he had secured a deal during a nearly two-hour-long phone conversation with Xi.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Saturday that the spin-off would see TikTok controlled by a seven-member board, filled with six Americans, and would ensure that its algorithm is “controlled by America”.

“Both the US and China now support ‘info-nationalism’,” Jeffrey Towson, a digital strategy consultant formerly based in China, told Al Jazeera.

“China has long insisted information flows be controlled domestically, and not by foreign companies or entities. The US has now come to the same conclusion. Digital platforms create powerful control points. They can shape and limit what can be said, read and watched.”

While it is unclear how the sale of TikTok might proceed under Chinese law, an agreement on the platform could mark a de-escalation in trade tensions between Washington and Beijing, said Heiwai Tang, director of the Asia Global Institute in Hong Kong.

“If the current additional 30 percent US tariffs on China could be lowered, the gain for China would be significant,” Tang told Al Jazeera.

China has only gone as far as to say that the sides have reached a “basic framework consensus” on TikTok.

“China’s position on the TikTok issue is clear: The Chinese government respects the wishes of the company in question, and would be happy to see productive commercial negotiations in keeping with market rules lead to a solution that complies with China’s laws and regulations and takes into account the interests of both sides,” China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement after Xi’s call with Trump.

China’s language about a “framework” for resolving the TikTok dispute leaves room for negotiations, and “details like who actually gets the algorithm – which, of course, Washington has said the US gets – could still very much be up for grabs,” the Atlantic Council’s Roberts said.

Chunmeizi Su, a media and communications lecturer at the University of Sydney, who researches platforms such as TikTok, expressed doubt that the full details of TikTok’s algorithm would be provided in any licensing deal.

“TikTok’s algorithm is not just about TikTok; it’s a core technology that has been used among other apps under ByteDance. There is a red line here for the company. I believe they would rather shut down TikTok US altogether than reveal the details of their algorithms,” Su told Al Jazeera.

“If this is the bottom line, it means that the licensing deal will only provide surface-level technologies, or, in other words, a shell of TikTok US. And even this will take a long time to achieve.”

Though a deal on TikTok would lower the temperature between the US and China, the sides would probably avoid explicitly linking the sale to concessions in other areas, said Charlie Chai, vice head of research at Beijing-based 86Research.

“I don’t think there will be explicit trade-off or getting anything in return”, Chai told Al Jazeera. Washington could quietly delay new tariffs or export restrictions later, he said, but that would be done as “an extension of a good-faith negotiation”.

“It is important to preserve the political optics that no explicit trade was made at the expense of supposedly non-negotiable core interests, which can easily lead to allegations that neither Beijing nor Washington wants to face,” Chai added.

Las Vegas Raiders offensive coordinator Chip Kelly told reporters Thursday that he does not game plan with team minority owner and Fox NFL broadcaster Tom Brady — at least not “on a weekly basis” — despite a report during “Monday Night Football” this week that suggested otherwise.

During the first quarter of the Chargers-Raiders game at Allegiant Stadium, ESPN’s Peter Schrager reported from the sideline that “Chip Kelly told us that he talks to Brady two to three times a week. They go through film. They go through the game plan.”

After the game, Raiders coach Pete Carroll called the report “not accurate” and said that while he and Kelly speak with Brady “regularly,” those conversations are “about life and football and whatever.”

Kelly was asked about the ESPN report during media availability Thursday. His response echoed Carroll’s.

“I’ve spent a lot of time just talking football with [Brady], but it’s not on a — we don’t talk about game plans,” the former UCLA coach said. “We spent a lot of time over the summer, a couple Zooms … and we would just talk ball, you know, ‘What did you like against this?’ So really, when I use Tom, and I just use him as a resource of, ‘Hey, you know, when you faced a Mike Zimmer-type defense, what did you like protection-wise and play-wise?’

“But on a weekly basis, he’s not game planning with us or talking to us.”

Kelly later added: “In terms of weekly game plans, like, that’s not a collaboration that we do. I mean, he’s also a busy guy, so I haven’t even thought of using him to do that, and I don’t think you can, so — you know, our staff does all that.

“But he’s been a guy that I could talk football with, just shooting it about, ‘Hey, have you ever faced a two-trap defense?’ and, ‘With the inverted, Tampa two that everybody’s running now, what was your best thoughts about that?,’ things like that. But we don’t talk game plan at all or any of that stuff in terms of on a weekly basis.”

The Times reached out to ESPN for comments from Schrager or the network on the matter. A network representative declined to comment.

During Schrager’s report, “Monday Night Football” showed a live shot of Brady sitting in the Raiders coaches’ booth and wearing a headset. Kelly told reporters Thursday that he thinks Brady did the same thing during the Raiders’ preseason game last month against the San Francisco 49ers, also at Allegiant Stadium.

“But he doesn’t talk to the coaches when he’s up there,” Kelly said. “I think he just — he’s watching football.”

NFL chief spokesperson Brian McCarthy said in a statement Tuesday that Brady was doing nothing wrong.

“There are no policies that prohibit an owner from sitting in the coaches’ booth or wearing a headset during a game,” McCarthy said. “Brady was sitting in the booth in his capacity as a limited partner.”

Brady faces a number of NFL-imposed restrictions on what he’s allowed to do as a broadcaster given his dual status as a team minority owner. Last season, Brady’s first in both roles, he was prohibited from attending the weekly production meetings during which the Fox crew meets with coaches and players ahead of that week’s game.

That restriction was eased going into this season.

“Tom continues to be prohibited from going to a team facility for practices or production meetings,” McCarthy said in his statement. “He may attend production meetings remotely but may not attend in person at the team facility or hotel. He may also conduct an interview off site with a player like he did last year a couple times, including for the Super Bowl.

“Of course, as with any production meeting with broadcast teams, it’s up to the club, coach or players to determine what they say in those sessions.”

WETHERSPOONS is opening 15 new pubs in a tie-up with a firm known for its chain of fish and chip shops. 

The budget boozer will launch the venues across the UK as part of a new franchise working with The Papas Group. 

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The first will open on October 1 in Gateway Park, Lincoln, and will be called The Hykeham Manor. 

A further three will open in October and November at sites in Annitsford, Northumberland, Stockton-on-Tees, Co Durham, and Emersons Green in Bristol. 

The pub chain’s commercial director, Michael Barron, said: “We are delighted to have signed agreements with The Papas Group.

“We are looking at further opportunities and are confident that more franchise agreements will be signed.”

The Papas Group is a family-owned business which runs casual dining restaurants such as Papa’s Fish and Chips and Wendy’s, mostly in the north of England. 

Wetherspoons already has several franchise agreements. They include tie-ups with the holiday park operator Haven and the universities of Newcastle and Hull — running a pub at each campus. 

These arrangements are common in the hospitality sector and allow an independent operator to run an established chain using their brand and products. 

Wetherspoons has opened pubs at several locations this year, including in Fulham, West London, and Kenilworth, Warwickshire. 

LOW-DEPOSIT DEALS RISE 

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THE number of low-deposit mortgages has hit the highest level in 17 years, according to Moneyfactscompare. 

There are currently 1,360 90 and 95 per cent deals available, representing 19 per cent of the residential mortgage market. 

The news comes after Homes England, the Government’s housing agency, and Countryside Properties signed a long-term deal to build more homes. 

The partnership will be backed by £150million of investment and will focus on building houses as part of the Government’s housebuilding target. 

SUNNY SALES 

RETAIL sales were up 3.1 per cent in August driven by good weather and an interest rate cut, official figures show. 

The year-on-year uptick beat last August’s 1 per cent. Tech items did well but school uniforms and shoes disappointed as families tried second-hand, said the British Retail Consortium-KPMG Retail Sales Monitor. 

Home appliances, DIY and garden goods all saw sales growth last month. 

OIL PRICE HIKE 

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OIL prices rose by more than a dollar a barrel yesterday as increases in supply looked set to stall and Russia braced itself for the impact of new EU sanctions. 

OPEC countries have voted to lift production by 137,000 barrels per day in October — far less than previous monthly increases. 

Experts have warned of a glut of oil next year as demand falls. Nevertheless Brent crude rose to $66.70 per barrel. 

When investors debate the future of the artificial intelligence (AI) trade, the conversation generally finds its way back to the usual suspects: Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, and cloud hyperscalers like Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet.

Each of these companies is racing to design GPUs or develop custom accelerators in-house. But behind this hardware, there’s a company that benefits no matter which chip brand comes out ahead: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM -3.05%).

Let’s unpack why Taiwan Semi is my top AI chip stock over the next 10 years, and assess whether now is an opportune time to scoop up some shares.

Agnostic to the winner, leveraged to the trend

As the world’s leading semiconductor foundry, TSMC manufactures chips for nearly every major AI developer — from Nvidia and AMD to Amazon’s custom silicon initiatives, dubbed Trainium and Inferentia.

Unlike many of its peers in the chip space that rely on new product cycles to spur demand, Taiwan Semi’s business model is fundamentally agnostic. Whether demand is allocated toward GPUs, accelerators, or specialized cloud silicon, all roads lead back to TSMC’s fabrication capabilities.

With nearly 70% market share in the global foundry space, Taiwan Semi’s dominance is hard to ignore. Such a commanding lead over the competition provides the company with unmatched structural demand visibility — a trend that appears to be accelerating as AI infrastructure spend remains on the rise.

Image source: Getty Images.

Scaling with more sophisticated AI applications

At the moment, AI development is still concentrated on training and refining large language models (LLMs) and embedding them into downstream software applications.

The next wave of AI will expand into far more diverse and demanding use cases — autonomous systems, robotics, and quantum computing remain in their infancy. At scale, these workloads will place greater demands on silicon than today’s chips can support.

Meeting these demands doesn’t simply require additional investments in chips. Rather, it requires chips engineered for new levels of efficiency, performance, and power management. This is where TSMC’s competitive advantages begin to compound.

With each successive generation of process technology, the company has a unique opportunity to widen the performance gap between itself and rivals like Samsung or Intel.

Since Taiwan Semi already has such a large footprint in the foundry landscape, next-generation design complexities give the company a chance to further lock in deeper, stickier customer relationships.

TSMC’s valuation and the case for expansion

Taiwan Semi may trade at a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 24, but dismissing the stock as “expensive” overlooks the company’s extraordinary positioning in the AI realm. To me, the company’s valuation reflects a robust growth outlook, improving earnings prospects, and a declining risk premium.

TSM PE Ratio (Forward) data by YCharts

Unlike many of its semiconductor peers, which are vulnerable to cyclicality headwinds, TSMC has become an indispensable utility for many of the world’s largest AI developers, evolving into one of the backbones of the ongoing infrastructure boom.

The scale of investment behind current AI infrastructure is jaw-dropping. Hyperscalers are investing staggering sums to expand and modernize data centers, and at the heart of each new buildout is an unrelenting demand for more chips. Moreover, each of these companies is exploring more advanced use cases that will, at some point, require next-generation processing capabilities.

These dynamics position Taiwan Semi at the crossroad of immediate growth and enduring long-term expansion, as AI infrastructure swiftly evolves from a constant driver of growth today into a multidecade secular theme.

TSMC’s manufacturing dominance ensures that its services will continue to witness robust demand for years to come. For this reason, I think Taiwan Semi is positioned to experience further valuation expansion over the next decade as the infrastructure chapter of the AI story continues to unfold.

While there are many great opportunities in the chip space, TSMC stands alone. I see it as perhaps the most unique, durable semiconductor stock to own amid a volatile technology landscape over the next several years.

US chipmaker reports revenue of $46.74bn for second quarter, defying fears that AI may be overhyped.

Chip giant Nvidia has set a new sales record, a sign that demand for artificial intelligence remains strong despite fearsthe technology may be overhyped.

Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, on Wednesday reported revenue of $46.74bn for the three months that ended in July, a rise of 56 percent year-on-year.

Profit for the quarter was $26.42bn, a yearly rise of 59 percent.

Nvidia’s latest earnings report had been hotly anticipated as the tech giant is widely seen as a barometer of the AI boom, which has lifted the US stock market from all-time high to all-time high.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that production of Blackwell Ultra, Nvidia’s latest platform using its most advanced chips, was ramping up “at full speed” and demand for the company’s products was “extraordinary”.

“The AI race is on, and Blackwell is the platform at its centre,” Jensen said.

Looking ahead, the Santa Clara, California-based tech giant predicted revenue of $54bn, plus or minus 2 percent, for the July-September quarter, which would be slightly above market expectations.

Despite the robust results, Nvidia’s stock price fell more than 3 percent in after-hours trading, an indication of the sky-high expectations attached to the chipmaker, which is valued at more than $4.4 trillion.

Nvidia’s sales notably did not include any shipments to China, whose market is subject to US government export controls intended to blunt Beijing’s ability to develop AI.

US President Donald Trump’s administration earlier this month lifted a ban on sales of Nvidia’s H20 chip, which was designed specifically for the Chinese market, following concerted lobbying by Huang.

As part of its agreement with the Trump administration, Nvidia agreed to pay the US government 15 percent of revenues from chip sales in China.

The lifting of the ban on the H20 raises the possibility that Nvidia could have potentially enormous untapped sales potential in the world’s second-largest economy, though its prospects have been complicated by a recent directive by Beijing urging local firms against doing business with the company.

“Just imagine what will happen to this stock if the China business even comes half back to life,” The Kobeissi Letter, a newsletter following capital markets, said.

“Jensen Huang will undoubtedly be working overtime on the China situation. The AI Revolution is in full swing.”

Fuelled by explosive demand for its AI, Nvidia’s revenue has grown at breakneck speed over the past two years.

The company posted triple-digit revenue growth for five straight quarters between mid-2023 and 2024.

Since the start of 2023, the price of Nvidia shares has multiplied more than 11 times over, with the stock up more than 30 percent so far this year.

The firm’s stellar performance, underpinned by multibillion-dollar AI investments by tech giants including Microsoft, Meta and Amazon, has stoked discussion about whether AI could be in a bubble.

In an interview with The Verge earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who oversaw the release of the groundbreaking AI model ChatGPT, said he believed that investors were “overexcited” about the technology.

NEW YORK — President Donald Trump on Friday announced the U.S. government has secured a 10% stake in struggling Silicon Valley pioneer Intel in a deal that was completed just a couple weeks after he was depicting the company’s CEO as a conflicted leader unfit for the job.

“The United States of America now fully owns and controls 10% of INTEL, a Great American Company that has an even more incredible future,” Trump wrote in a post.

The U.S. government is getting the stake through the conversion of $11.1 billion in previously issued funds and pledges. All told, the government is getting 433.3 million shares of non-voting stock priced at $20.47 apiece — a discount from Friday’s closing price at $24.80.

That spread means the U.S. government already has a gain of $1.9 billion, on paper. The remarkable turn of events makes the U.S. government one of Intel’s largest shareholders at a time that the Santa Clara, California, company is in the process of jettisoning more than 20,000 workers as part of its latest attempt to bounce back from years of missteps taken under a variety of CEOs.

Intel’s current CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, has only been on the job for slightly more than five months, and earlier this month, it looked like he might be on shaky ground already after some lawmakers raised national security concerns about his past investments in Chinese companies while he was a venture capitalist.

Trump latched on to those concerns in an August 7 post demanding that Tan resign.

But Trump backed off after the Malaysian-born Tan professed his allegiance to the U.S. in a public letter to Intel employees and went to the White House to meet with the president, leading to a deal that now has the U.S. government betting that the company is on the comeback trail after losing more than $22 billion since the end of 2023.

Trump hailed Tan as “highly respected” CEO in his Friday post. In a statement, Tan applauded Trump for “driving historic investments in a vital industry” and resolved to reward his faith in Intel.

“We are grateful for the confidence the President and the Administration have placed in Intel, and we look forward to working to advance U.S. technology and manufacturing leadership,” Tan said.

Intel’s current stock price is just slightly above where it was when Tan was hired in March and more than 60% below its peak reached 25 years ago when its chips were still dominating the personal computer boom before being undercut by a shift to smartphones a few years later.

The company’s market value currently stands at about $108 billion – a fraction of the current chip kingpin, Nvidia, which is valued at $4.3 trillion. The stake is coming primarily through U.S. government grants to Intel through the CHIPS and Science Act that was started under President Joe Biden’s administration as a way to foster more domestic manufacturing of computer chips to lessen the dependence on overseas factories.

But the Trump administration, which has regularly pilloried the policies of the Biden administration, saw the CHIPs act as a needless giveaway and is now hoping to make a profit off the funding that had been pledged to Intel.

“We think America should get the benefit of the bargain,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said earlier this week. “It’s obvious that it’s the right move to make.”About $7.8 billion had been been pledged to Intel under the incentives program, but only $2.2 billion had been funded so far. Another $3.2 billion of the government investment is coming through the funds from another program called “Secure Enclave.”

Although the U.S. government can’t vote with its shares and won’t have a seat on Intel’s board of directors, critics of the deal view it as a troubling cross-pollination between the public and private sectors that could hurt the tech industry in a variety of ways.

For instance, more tech companies may feel pressured to buy potentially inferior chips from Intel to curry favor with Trump at a time that he is already waging a trade war that threatens to affect their products in a potential scenario cited by Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics for the Cato Institute.

“Overall, it’s a horrendous move that will have real harms for U.S. companies, U.S. tech leadership, and the U.S. economy overall,” Lincicome posted Friday.

The 10% stake could also intensify the pressure already facing Tan, especially if Trump starts fixating on Intel’s stock price while resorting to his penchant for celebrating his past successes in business.

Nancy Tengler, CEO of money manager Laffer Tengler Investments, is among the investors who abandoned Intel years ago because of all the challenges facing Intel.

“I don’t see the benefit to the American taxpayer, nor do I see the benefit, necessarily to the chip industry,” Tengler said while also raising worries about Trump meddling in Intel’s business.

“I don’t care how good of businessman you are, give it to the private sector and let people like me be the critic and let the government get to the business of government.,” Tengler said.

Although rare, it’s not unprecedented for the U.S. government to become a significant shareholder in a prominent company. One of the most notable instances occurred during the Great Recession in 2008 when the government injected nearly $50 billion into General Motors in return for a roughly 60% stake in the automaker at a time it was on the verge of bankruptcy.

The government ended up with a roughly $10 billion loss after it sold its stock in GM. The U.S. government’s stake in Intel coincides with Trump’s push to bring production to the U.S., which has been a focal point of the trade war that he has been waging throughout the world.

By lessening the country’s dependence on chips manufactured overseas, the president believes the U.S. will be better positioned to maintain its technological lead on China in the race to create artificial intelligence.

Even before gaining the 10% stake in Intel, Trump had been leveraging his power to reprogram the operations of major computer chip companies. The administration is requiring Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, two companies whose chips are powering the AI craze, to pay a 15% commission on their sales of chips in China in exchange for export licenses.

United States President Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs of up to 300 percent on semiconductor imports, with exemptions for foreign companies that commit to manufacturing in the US.

Trump has cast the proposed tariff as a way to drive investment to the US, but experts say it could also disrupt global supply chains and even penalise companies already making chips in the US.

What are the details of Trump’s plan?

Few details have been released since Trump announced plans for a 100 percent tariff at a White House event on August 7.

The US president said exemptions would be given to companies that build research or manufacturing facilities in the US, but tariffs could be applied retroactively if they failed to follow through on their planned investments.

“If, for some reason, you say you’re building, and you don’t build, then we go back, and we add it up, it accumulates, and we charge you at a later date, you have to pay, and that’s a guarantee,” Trump told reporters.

On Friday, Trump told reporters on board Air Force One that more details would be announced soon and that the tariff could be much higher than previously suggested.

“I’ll be setting tariffs next week and the week after, on steel and on, I would say chips – chips and semiconductors, we’ll be setting sometime next week, week after,” Trump said en route to Alaska to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I’m going to have a rate that is going to be 200 percent, 300 percent,” he added.

Why does Trump want to impose tariffs on chip imports?

Trump wants to impose a tariff on chips for several reasons, but the main one is to re-shore investment and manufacturing to the US, said G Dan Hutcheson, the vice chair of Canada’s TechInsights.

“The primary goal is to reverse the cost disadvantage of manufacturing in the US and turn it into an advantage. It’s mainly focused on companies that are not investing in the US,” Hutcheson told Al Jazeera.

“Exclusions are negotiable for entities that align with his goal of bringing manufacturing back to the US.”

More broadly, the tariff is also intended to address the US dependence on imported semiconductors and buttress Washington’s position in its ongoing rivalry with China, another chip-making powerhouse.

Both issues are bipartisan concerns in the US.

The Trump administration earlier this year launched a Section 301 investigation into alleged unfair trade practices in China’s semiconductor industry, and a Section 232 investigation into the national security implications of US reliance on chip imports and finished products that use foreign chips.

Who will be impacted by the tariff?

Foreign tech giants that have already invested in the US, including the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and South Korea’s Samsung, would likely not be affected by the tariff.

It is less clear how the measure could affect other companies, including chip makers in China, where companies face barriers to US investment from both US and Chinese regulators.

Yongwook Ryu, an assistant professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, said the tariff could be used as leverage by the US as it negotiates the rate of its so-called “reciprocal tariffs” on China.

The US has imposed blanket tariffs of 10-40 percent on most trade partners since August 7, but negotiators are still hammering out a comprehensive trade deal with Beijing.

“My view is that while the reciprocal tariffs are generally aimed more at addressing the US trade deficit problem and re-shoring manufacturing back to the US, product-specific or sectoral tariffs [like semiconductors] are aimed at serving the strategic goal of strengthening US technological hegemony and containing China,” Ryu told Al Jazeera.

What is the value of US chip imports each year?

The US imported about $40bn in chips in 2024, according to a report by the American Enterprise Institute, citing United Nations trade data.

Imports mainly came from Taiwan, Malaysia, Israel, South Korea, Ireland, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Mexico and China, but experts say this data does not capture the full picture of chip flows in and out of the US.

Chips can cross borders multiple times as they are manufactured, packaged, or added to finished goods.

Chris Miller, the author of Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology, estimates that another $50bn worth of chips entered the US in 2024 via products like smartphones, auto parts and home appliances from countries like China and Vietnam.

Miller also estimates that a “substantial portion” of US chip imports are manufactured in the US before being sent overseas for packaging – a labour-intensive process – and then re-imported.

“Many of the chips imported from key trading partners like Mexico, Malaysia and Costa Rica are likely actually manufactured by US firms like Texas Instruments and Intel, which have manufacturing in the US but often have their test and assembly facilities abroad,” Miller told Al Jazeera.

Why is the tariff a concern for the global chip industry?

Trump’s tariff plans have injected further uncertainty into an industry already grappling with his administration’s sweeping efforts to reorder global trade.

“It’s unclear whether the US government has the capacity to effectively enforce this and… there’s not really any guidance in terms of what these tariffs are actually going to look like,” Nick Marro, the lead analyst for global trade at the Economist Intelligence Unit, told Al Jazeera.

The White House has yet to provide details on whether the tariff will apply to chips originally made in the US and chips contained in finished products.

If the latter were included in the tariff plans, the fallout would extend to industries like electronics, home appliances, automobiles and auto parts. 

Miller said that it would be consumers in the US and elsewhere who would be among those most affected by the tariff. 

“Initially, it appears that most costs would be paid by companies via lower profit margins, though in the long run, consumers will pay the majority of the cost,” he said.

Trains from London are planned to stop in this beautiful seaside town in the north of England, marking the destination’s first and only direct rail connection to the capital

Plans are progressing to establish a new direct rail link from London to the stunning Durham coastline in northern England.

Starting December 2025, trains will begin calling at the town of Seaham in County Durham, renowned for its striking cliffs, sandy beaches, and fascinating maritime heritage. Visitors should arrive with an appetite too, as the town boasts no fewer than 10 fish and chip shops, according to Google Maps.

The railway service will be operated by the Open Access operator Grand Central, supported by transport firm Arriva. Operators such as Grand Central remain outside the Labour government’s nationalisation proposals, utilising their own finances, reports the Express. It comes after images show the cheapest seaside spot in England is full of abandoned £40k homes ‘nobody wants’.

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Grahame Morris, the MP for Easington said: “I’m delighted to share that the Office of Rail and Road has confirmed that Grand Central Trains will begin stopping at Seaham Station from December 2025 to December 2026. [There will be] four stopping services per day in each direction.”

Home to roughly 21,500 inhabitants, Seaham is a bustling harbour town along the Durham Coast, boasting award-winning hotels, an extensive array of cafés and breathtaking clifftop vistas.

Seaham Beach features a combination of rocky and sandy shoreline, extending roughly one mile along the town’s coast, from the harbour wall to the northern edge of the settlement. Seaham is famous for vibrant sea glass – manmade glass that was previously discarded at sea before being tumbled and shaped by the water over several years and eventually washing ashore.

A visitor said on Tripadvisor this past April: “Lovely beach with beautiful coloured pebbles and sea glass. There are car parks along the seafront – only cost £3 for the whole day. Town is within walkable distance and has a number of good fish and chips shop. Bell’s fish restaurant has plenty of seating inside when the weather’s cold. There’s also a market. Great for a relaxing day out.”

The news emerges as UK rail regulators approved extended track access rights for Grand Central’s current operations through to 2038. The trains will be manufactured at Hitachi’s Newton Aycliffe plant, the company’s British manufacturing hub.

Arriva officially submitted an application to the UK Office of Rail and Road, the appropriate authority, to broaden its Grand Central operations into Lincolnshire from 2026. The operator is also pursuing approval for plans involving two additional daily return journeys between Bradford and London, plus an early morning and late evening return from York to London, along with connections to Seaham, which would mark the town’s first and only direct link to London.

Morris added: “Although the approval is currently for a one-year period using 5-car trains, I’m confident that these services will be well-used by residents across our community.

“This means that our constituency will now have direct rail links to York and London, alongside increased capacity to local destinations such as Sunderland and Hartlepool.”

Trade experts express concern about reported deal linking exports controls to monetary payments.

Nvidia and AMD have agreed to give the United States government a share of revenues from chip sales in China as part of a deal to secure export licences for their products, US media have reported.

Under the agreement reached with US President Donald Trump’s administration, Nvidia will share 15 percent of revenues from sales of its H20 AI chip, while AMD will pay the same percentage of MI308 chip revenues, multiple outlets reported on Sunday.

The unorthodox agreement, which has no known precedent, comes after the Trump administration last month agreed to reverse a ban on the sale of Nvidia’s H20 chips to China.

The Financial Times, which first reported the news, said the Trump administration had yet to decide how it would use the collected revenues.

AMD did not respond to a request for comment.

Nvidia neither confirmed nor denied the deal, but said it follows US government rules for doing business in overseas markets.

“While we haven’t shipped H20 to China for months, we hope export control rules will let America compete in China and worldwide,” a company spokesperson said.

“America cannot repeat 5G and lose telecommunication leadership. America’s AI tech stack can be the world’s standard if we race.”

Following reports of the deal, which was confirmed by The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and the BBC, trade experts expressed concern about the implications of linking controls on sensitive technology to monetary payments.

Christopher Padilla, the former head of the US Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration, called the agreement “astonishing”.

“If the Trump administration is allowing companies to buy their way past export controls imposed to protect US national security, we are in very dangerous waters,” Padilla said in a post on LinkedIn.

“A mix of bribery and blackmail that is certainly unprecedented and possibly illegal.”

Peter Harrell, a nonresident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the deal set a worrying precedent.

“The Chinese would pay a lot for F35s and advanced US military technology, too,” Harrell said in a post on X.

“Regardless of whether you think Nvidia should be able to sell H20s in China, charging a fee in exchange for relaxing national security export controls is a terrible precedent.”

Chip giants Nvidia and AMD have agreed to pay the US government 15% of their semiconductor sales in China, the BBC has been told by a source close to the matter.

The agreement is part of a deal to secure export licences to the world’s second biggest economy.

“We follow rules the US government sets for our participation in worldwide markets. While we haven’t shipped H20 to China for months, we hope export control rules will let America compete in China and worldwide,” Nvidia told the BBC.

AMD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a statement to the BBC, Nvidia also said: “America cannot repeat 5G and lose telecommunication leadership. America’s [artificial intelligence] tech stack can be the world’s standard if we race.”

Under the agreement, Nvidia will pay 15% of its revenues from H20 chip sales in China to the US government, while AMD will give the same percentage from its MI308 chip revenues, which was first reported by the Financial Times.

Washington has previously banned the sale of Nvidia’s H20 chips to Beijing over security concerns, although the firm recently announced that this would be reversed.

The H20 chip was developed specifically for the Chinese market after US export restrictions were imposed by the Biden administration in 2023. Its sale was effectively banned by the Trump administration in April this year.

Nvidia’s chief executive Jensen Huang has spent months lobbying both sides for a resumption of sales of the chips in China. He reportedly met US President Donald Trump last week.

The resumption of chip sales to China comes as trade tensions between Beijing and Washington have been easing.

Beijing has relaxed controls on rare earth exports, while the US has lifted restrictions on chip design software firms operating in China.

In May, the world’s two biggest economies agreed to a 90-day truce in their tariffs war.

Since then, top trade officials from both sides have met on a number of occasions, although an agreement to extend the tariffs pause has not yet been confirmed ahead of a 12 August deadline.

As part of his tariffs policy, Trump has put pressure on major companies to make more investments in the US.

Last week, Apple said it would invest another $100bn (£74.4bn) in the country, adding to a previous pledge to spend $500bn in the US over the next four years.

In June, memory chip maker Micron Technology said its planned US investments will total $200bn. That includes construction of a new manufacturing facility in Idaho.

Nvidia itself has announced plans to build AI servers in the US worth up to $500bn, pledging to build the first AI supercomputers that are entirely American-made.

This award-winning beach in Scotland is backed by impressive sand dunes and has become a beloved destination for kitesurfing – it also happens to be a stone’s throw away from a celebrated chip shop

Scotland might not be the first destination on your radar when temperatures rise, but it happens to be the home of the best beach you’ve never heard of. This dune-backed bay also happens to be a short jaunt from an award-winning fish and chip shop. St Andrews West Sands can be found on the eastern coastline of Fife.

The beach is surrounded by breath-taking sand dunes and a world-renowned golf course. Even first-time visitors may find the stunning view surprisingly familiar. West Sands is famous for featuring in the opening sequence of the 1981 film Chariots of Fire, in which a group of runners jog across the sand to a now-iconic soundtrack.

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Still today, West Sands is popular for walking and running – stretching for nearly two miles. The beach is also a great swimming spot – and particularly safe thanks to RNLI lifeguard patrol. But keep in mind that lifeguards are only on duty during the busier summer season.

According to the RNLI website, the official lifeguard patrol dates for West Sands in 2025 are: June 21 – August 24 between 10am and 6pm local time. The organisation also warns beach-goers that no flags on the beach means that there are no lifeguards on duty.

St Andrews West Sands is also particularly popular with kite surfers. As noted on online forums, there is a large and well-established “Kite Zone” at the far north-end of the beach – outside of which kitesurfing is not permitted.

In fact, there are quite a few great kitesurfing destinations in Fife. Pettycur Bay, Shell Bay, and Monifieth are also great destinations to check out during your travels. Once you’ve hit the water at West Sands though, you’re only a 15-minute walk to the town centre where there is plenty of parking and you can explore the area’s famous golf courses or grab a bite to eat.

The town centre is famous for its golf heritage, and again, the beach is backed by some of the world’s top courses. West Sands also puts you in close proximity to the award-winning Cromars fish and chip shop.

Here, customers can enjoy a range of classics, including battered haddock, king prawns, fish cakes and smoked sausage. The establishment has been recognised by numerous awards bodies including the Scottish Fish and Chip Awards and the National Fish and Chip Awards.

West Sands also overlooks the Eden Estuary Nature Reserve and is home to a range of seabirds and seals. A dune stabilisation programme is in place and visitors are asked to use the designated access points to access the beach.

St Andrews West Sands are winners of a Keep Scotland Beautiful 2025 Scotland’s Beach Award and are celebrating 33 years of awards. The flat sand beach is also particularly accessible, with beach wheelchairs available for hire from the Hamish Foundation.

Chip Gaines had a few select words after Samaritan’s Purse founder Franklin Graham publicly criticized his and wife Joanna’s new HBO Max show for casting a same-sex couple with twins among the three families who are featured.

Graham, who is the son of evangelist Billy Graham, wrote Saturday on X that he found it “very disappointing” to hear that Jason Hanna, Joe Riggs and their boys, Ethan and Lucas, were included on “Back to the Frontier,” produced by Magnolia Network. Chip and Joanna Gaines created Magnolia and are executive producers on the show.

“I hope this isn’t true, but I read today that Chip and Joanna Gaines are featuring a gay couple in their new series. If It is true, it is very disappointing,” Graham wrote. “While we are to love people, we should love them enough to tell them the truth of God’s Word. His Word is absolute truth. God loves us, and His design for marriage is between one man and one woman. Promoting something that God defines as sin is in itself sin.”

The American Family Assn. — which bills itself as a “pro-family organization” and was formerly known as the National Federation for Decency — chimed in first, posting a statement from Vice President Ed Vitagliano saying, “This is sad and disappointing, because Chip and Joanna Gaines have been very influential in the evangelical community. Moreover, in the past, they have stood firm on the sanctity of marriage regardless of the personal cost that has entailed. We aren’t sure why the Gaines have reversed course, but we are sure of this: Back to the Frontier promotes an unbiblical view of human sexuality, marriage, and family — a view no Christian should embrace.”

Chip Gaines, who with his wife belongs to the evangelical Antioch Community Church in Waco, Texas, fired off what seemed to be a reply on Sunday.

“Talk, ask qustns, listen.. maybe even learn. Too much to ask of modern American Christian culture. Judge 1st, understand later/never,” he wrote on X. “It’s a sad sunday when ‘non believers’ have never been confronted with hate or vitriol until they are introduced to a modern American Christian.”

Matt Walsh, a conservative filmmaker, political commentator and podcast host at the Daily Wire, fired back at Chip Gaines with a response that said, “Maybe you should endeavor to understand the basic moral teachings of your own alleged religion before you give lectures to other people about their lack of understanding.”

Two hours after his “sad sunday” post, Gaines wrote that his family was off to worship, reposting a 2016 tweet in which he said, “In times of trouble.. you’ll find the gaines family at church.”

Meanwhile, on her Instagram on Tuesday, Joanna Gaines was promoting all the Magnolia Network shows nominated for Daytime Emmys.

Separate from the online back-and-forth, Jason Hanna and Joe Riggs have been posting about their family on their @2_dallas_dads Instagram account since the arrival of the twins in May 2014.

“When our boys were born — our twin boys were born via surrogacy in 2014 — we faced some legal challenges, and so we’ve always felt it it to be important that we try to be an example for same-sex couples,” Hanna told Queerty in a story published last week. “And so we’re super honored that, when they were choosing three modern day families, they did choose the same[-sex] couple as a modern-day family — because we are; we’re your neighbors, and your coworkers. And so it was this amazing opportunity to [continue to] normalize same-sex couples and same-sex families.”

“Back to the Frontier” throws three families — from Alabama, Florida and Texas — into an eight-week scenario that recalls the 1880s. Living on the “frontier,” the families have to reinforce their own shelters, raise livestock, collect food and manage their supplies. The goal by the end of the show is to gather enough resources to make it through winter. But don’t worry — the families are all back in modern air-conditioning right now.

“Through this immersive experience, the families will have to reflect on their relationships and navigate the challenges that come with an 1880s lifestyle,” HBO Max said in a release. The show premiered Thursday.

HBO Max did not reply immediately to The Times’ request for additional comment Tuesday.

Chip and Joanna Gaines were caught up in a different conflict over LGBTQ+ issues in May 2023 after Target, which carries the couple’s Magnolia Home line among its household items, came under fire for carrying transgender-targeted items as part of its seasonal Pride Month selections. Some critics also hammered Target’s recognition of Pride Month at all. A boycott was urged among right-wing conservatives. They also called for a comment from the couple.

“No one doubts that Chip and Joanna are good people, kind, moral, and aligned with American values,” Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy said at the time when she was subbing as host of “Jesse Watters Primetime.” “But if I had a line at a company and my name was on it and that brand partnered with a trans Satanist that makes tuck ‘em bikinis for kids, I would feel compelled to speak up.

“Now, maybe they’re raising questions internally. Of course, that’s possible, but why aren’t they doing so publicly?”

The person whom Campos-Duffy — wife of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy — called a “trans Satanist” is London designer Erik Carnell, who is trans and whose Abprallen line had partnered with Target until the retailer ended the relationship under pressure from the boycott. Carnell’s full line included a design that said “Satan respects pronouns.” That design was never available at Target, according to CNN.

Conservative activist Benny Johnson also posted a video of himself in a Target store at the time, touring the Pride Month section, then walking what he said was “10 steps” to the Magnolia Home display. He referred to Joanna Gaines and her family sarcastically as “the paragons of Christian entrepreneurs and family values.”

“I’ve been tweeting about how Christian influencers Chip & Joanna Gaines have not disavowed Target’s Satanic child grooming despite the backlash,” he said. “What I didn’t know is the Gaines Section of Target is directly ACROSS from the Groomer section. Not cool.”

Chip and Joanna Gaines did not speak out during that controversy.

WASHINGTON, June 12 (UPI) — Taiwan may be an island of just over 23 million people, but what happens there could ripple across the global economy. The small democratic nation produces the vast majority of the world’s most advanced semiconductors — chips that are used in everything from smartphones and electric cars to defense systems and spacecraft.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. “produces roughly 90% of the most sophisticated computer chips, and the loss of that would be devastating,” said Steven David, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “We can’t get around without it.”

For Taiwan, this manufacturing dominance isn’t just economic — it’s strategic. Analysts call it the island’s “silicon shield.” The world relies heavily on Taiwan’s chips, which deters China from launching a military attack and pushes allies like the United States to come to Taiwan’s defense.

The geopolitical stakes around Taiwan’s semiconductor dominance have soared as China escalates military pressure, through increased fighter jet incursions, large-scale naval drills and explicit threats of reunification.

U.S. lawmakers from both parties have increasingly voiced concern that a Chinese invasion could upend global chip supply chains and empower Beijing with outsized economic leverage.

“It [would be] monumentally stupid to try to keep something as fragile as chips production going during the time of war,” said Kitsch Liao, associate director of the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub.

The United States has taken steps to address this vulnerability. In 2022, former President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act, allocating $280 billion to support domestic semiconductor manufacturing and research, including subsidies for Taiwan Semiconductor to build a plant in Phoenix.

In March, President Donald Trump announced a new $100 billion deal with the company to dramatically expand its manufacturing presence in the United States.

“America is building plants with Taiwanese investment and cooperation in Arizona and elsewhere, but it would still be devastating,” David said, referring to the potential impact of a Chinese attack on chip production.

Taiwan’s government has had to carefully balance cooperation with the United States against growing fears at home that shifting too much chip production abroad could weaken its security.

Taiwan’s two main political parties, the Kuomintang, or KMT, and the Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, have debated the best approach to cross-strait relations.

While the KMT supports closer ties with China, the DPP, which currently holds the presidency under Lai Ching-te, has leaned toward reinforcing Taiwan’s democratic independence and diversifying trade, actions that could increase already mounting pressure from China.

“If China does successfully invade Taiwan and takes over the TSMC plant, it won’t be able to use the plant the way Taiwan does,” David said. “But it would deny its use to others, and that would be devastating to the world economy. Several percentages of world GDP would drop as a result.”

Analysts worry that even the threat of invasion could destabilize markets. Blockades or gray zone tactics by Beijing, short of all-out war, could still limit Taiwan Semiconductors’ ability to export.

“Any erosion in Taiwan’s ability to trade with the rest of the world would have a significant impact on the global economy,” said Jack Burnham, a research analyst at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“It would disrupt the flow of semiconductors to a variety of different industries that are incredibly valuable to the United States, its allies and partners, and the global community.”

Taiwan has long been one of the most contentious issues in United States-China relations. After the Chinese Civil War, the Nationalist government fled to Taiwan in 1949, and the Chinese Communist Party established the People’s Republic of China on the mainland. Since then, Beijing has claimed Taiwan as an inalienable part of its territory.

In 1979, the United States. ended formal diplomatic recognition of Taipei in favor of Beijing, but passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which commits the United States to help Taiwan maintain a “sufficient self-defense capability.”

The United States, though, has remained deliberately vague about whether it would come to Taiwan’s defense in the event of a Chinese invasion — a policy known as strategic ambiguity.

But as threats of an invasion increased, this stance continued to be tested. In a speech in Singapore last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed that “devastating consequences” could result should China seek to “conquer” Taiwan, warning that an invasion could be “imminent.”

Beyond semiconductor and chips manufacturing, Taiwan remains a core interest in the Indo-Pacific region. The island sits at the heart of the “first island chain,” a line of U.S.-aligned territories stretching from Japan to the Philippines.

If China were to take over Taiwan, experts warned it could use the island as a launchpad to project power deep into the Pacific, posing a direct challenge to U.S. interests.

“Should China be successful [in a reunification scenario], it would have a significant impact on the lives of everyday Americans — both in their wallets and in the political situation they find themselves in,” Burnham said.

“What’s at stake when it comes to Taiwan is the free flow of trade, a significant part of the American economy, and the health and stability of the United States’ key allies and partners in the region.”

By Tina Teng

Published on
29/05/2025 – 7:25 GMT+2

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Nvidia reported first-quarter earnings for fiscal year 2026 that exceeded market expectations and provided an upbeat outlook for the current quarter. This comes despite an estimated $8 billion (€7.1 billion) loss due to US chip export restrictions affecting sales to China.

Nvidia’s share price jumped nearly 5% in after-hours trading, placing it just 8% below its all-time high in January. Year-to-date, the stock is set to return to a positive return amid the price surge. Nvidia is now the world’s biggest company, surpassing Microsoft and Apple in market capitalisation.

“Investors entered this quarter looking for signs that Nvidia could alleviate short-term concerns. What they received was a clear message that demand remains robust,” said Josh Gilbert, a market analyst at eToro Australia.

Upbeat earnings results

Sales revenue from Nvidia’s core business, data centres, increased by 73% year-on-year to $39.1 billion (€34.7 billion), reaching a new record. However, this represented a deceleration from 93% growth in the previous quarter. Despite the slower pace, the result aligned with market expectations, as some analysts had anticipated weaker figures due to regulatory headwinds.

Overall revenue rose 69% to $44.1 billion (€39.2 billion), while earnings per share came in at $0.96 (€0.85), both ahead of expectations. CEO Jensen Huang attributed the sustained growth to strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI), particularly from major cloud service providers. Nvidia’s most advanced AI chip, Blackwell, “is now in full-scale production across system makers and cloud service providers,” said Huang.

“Global demand for Nvidia’s AI infrastructure is incredibly strong. AI inference token generation has surged tenfold in just one year, and as AI agents become mainstream, the demand for AI computing will accelerate. Countries around the world are recognising AI as essential infrastructure—just like electricity and the internet—and Nvidia stands at the centre of this profound transformation,” he added.

Impact of China-related restrictions

The company expects revenue of $45 billion (€40 billion), plus or minus 2%, for the current quarter. “This outlook reflects a loss in H20 revenue of approximately $8.0 billion due to the recent export control limitations,” it stated.

The US government required Nvidia to obtain export licences for its H20 GPUs destined for China during the first quarter. Although the H20 chips had previously been approved, the new rules led to $4.5 billion (€4 billion) in write-downs due to excess inventory. Without this, the company would have generated an additional $2.5 billion (€2.2 billion) in sales.

As a result, Nvidia’s gross margin for the first quarter stood at 61%. It would have been 71.3% had the charges not occurred. “The $50 billion China market is effectively closed to

the US industry,” Huang said. “As a result, we are taking a multibillion-dollar write-off on inventory that cannot be sold or repurposed.”

Nvidia expects a non-GAAP gross margin of 72.0%, plus or minus 50 basis points, for the current quarter. For context, the margin was 73.5% in the fourth quarter of 2024 and 79% during the same quarter of the previous fiscal year.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Huang noted that Nvidia is exploring alternatives to the H20 chip. However, the company must obtain approval from the US government for any such measures.

US factory and Middle East venture

Nvidia is among the tech giants supporting President Donald Trump’s ambitious AI initiatives in the United States, announced in January. The company also unveiled a partnership with Saudi Arabia’s HUMAIN to build AI factories in the kingdom during a recent visit to the region that coincided with Trump’s trip. These developments were highlighted in the earnings report in the section for data centre.

“While sales in China are clouded by export restrictions, the Middle East looks set to become the new launchpad for Nvidia’s next phase of growth,” Gilbert added.

US electronic design automation software makers were told via letters to stop supplies to China, the FT reported.

United States President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered US firms that offer software used to design semiconductors to stop selling their services to Chinese groups, the Financial Times has reported, citing people familiar with the move.

Electronic design automation software makers, which include Cadence, Synopsys and Siemens EDA, were told via letters from the US Commerce Department to stop supplying their tech, the report, which was published on Wednesday, said.

A spokesperson for the Commerce Department declined to comment on the letters but said it is reviewing exports of strategic significance to China, while noting that, “in some cases, Commerce has suspended existing export licenses or imposed additional license requirements while the review is pending”.

Shares of Cadence, which declined to comment, closed down by 10.7 percent, while shares of Synopsys fell by 9.6 percent.

Synopsys CEO Sassine Ghazi said in a call with analysts that the company had not received a letter, nor had it heard from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry (BIS) and Security, which enforces export controls.

“We are aware of the reporting and speculations, but Synopsys has not received a notice from BIS. So, our guidance that we are reiterating for the full year, reflects our current understanding of BIS export restrictions as well as our expectations for year-over-year decline in China. We have not received a letter,” Ghazi said.

After the market closed, Synopsys reaffirmed its revenue forecast for 2025. Its shares and those of Cadence bounced back 3.5 percent in trading after the close.

Siemens EDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The software of these firms is used to design both high-end processors as well as simpler products.

While the scope of the policy change described in the report was not immediately clear, any move to strip the software makers of their Chinese customers could deal a blow to their bottom line and to their Chinese chip design customers, which heavily rely on top-of-the-line US software.

“They are the true choke point,” said a former Commerce Department official, who added that rules restricting the export of EDA tools to China have been under consideration since the first Trump administration, but were ruled out as too aggressive.

Synopsys relies on China for about 16 percent of its annual revenue, while China accounts for about 12 percent of annual revenue for Cadence.

Synopsys, which partners with chip companies such as Nvidia, Qualcomm and Intel, provides software and hardware used for designing advanced processors.