Mark Cuban said on Monday that it’s a good move to have Nvidia and AMD pay the US government 15% of their China chip sales revenues.
“This is a ‘billionaire’s tax’ structured as a royalty or sales tax on semiconductors from the most valuable company in the world, sold to China,” Cuban wrote on X, after the Financial Times first reported that President Donald Trump had imposed the requirement on the two chipmakers.
Cuban — who spent the 2024 election campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris — said Trump deserves praise if the government does get a cut from Nvidia and AMD’s China chip sales.
“Everyone knows how I feel about POTUS, but he doesn’t get everything wrong,” Cuban said on Monday, referencing his past criticisms of Trump’s tariff policies.
“Will this make up for the explosion of the deficits we face? Not as it stands now. Not close. But give him credit for knowing how those CEOs approach problems and opportunities, and using his leverage to generate tax revenues,” Cuban added.
Cuban and the White House did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
“POTUS is more progressive when it comes to taxation than anyone in the progressive wing of the Dems has ever been. The Dems should be celebrating just how progressive it is. The irony,” Cuban wrote on X.
Cuban said on Monday that progressive Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts should have floated the 15% requirement.
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“They are so intent on income and wealth taxes on ‘oligarchs,’ they have no concept of leverage in business. Trump does,” Cuban said.
“He took 15% of equity from a company. That is the ULTIMATE wealth tax. He diluted every shareholder, upfront, regardless of their net worth. Lol. A progressive dream!” Cuban added.
Representatives for Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, and Warren did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
Last month, Nvidia said it would start selling its H20 chips in China again. The H20 chip is a China-specific product that was designed to be less advanced than Nvidia’s other offerings. AMD made a similar announcement as well.
In April, Nvidia said the Trump administration wanted them to apply for special licenses to sell their chips to China. Nvidia said those restrictions would have resulted in a $5.5 billion charge.
In July, David Sacks, the White House’s AI and crypto czar, said the administration’s volte-face targeted Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant. Letting Nvidia sell a “deprecated, less capable chip” to the Chinese will “deprive Huawei of basically having this giant market share in China,” Sacks told Bloomberg’s Ed Ludlow.
