TheChek News Flow

The president decided against discussing the matter with Chinese leader Xi Jinping after top aides opposed it

Shortly before President Trump met Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea, an urgent issue emerged. Trump wanted to discuss a request by Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang to allow sales of a new generation of artificial-intelligence chips to China, current and former administration officials said.

Greenlighting the export of Nvidia’s Blackwell chips would be a seismic policy shift potentially giving China, the U.S.’s biggest geopolitical competitor, a technological accelerant. Huang—who speaks to Trump often—has lobbied relentlessly to maintain access to the Chinese market.

As they prepared to meet Xi, top officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Trump the sales would threaten national security, saying they would boost China’s AI data-center capabilities and backfire on the U.S., the officials said.

The U.S. was already preparing to make other concessions in the meeting with Xi, in exchange for Beijing allowing exports of rare-earth magnets. Others against the approval, the officials said, included U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who helped lead trade talks.

Faced with nearly unified opposition from his top advisers, Trump decided not to discuss the advanced Nvidia chips during his Oct. 30 meeting with Xi in Busan, South Korea, the officials said.

Trump’s ultimate decision marked a victory for Rubio and other Trump advisers over Huang, leader of the world’s most valuable public company. Exports of Blackwell chips to China are potentially worth tens of billions of dollars in sales and could help Nvidia keep Chinese AI companies hooked on Nvidia’s technology.

Nvidia is awaiting approval from the Trump administration to move ahead with a less powerful version of its Blackwell chip for the Chinese market. Blackwell is the company’s latest generation of AI processors.

“President Trump listens to a variety of insights on policy matters, including from top business leaders,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said. “President Trump’s historic meeting with President Xi proves, however, that the only factor guiding his decision-making is the best interest of the American people.”

Speaking at an Nvidia event in Washington before the Trump-Xi meeting, Huang emphasized the importance of the world’s second-largest economy, which he estimates is home to about half of the world’s AI researchers.

The CEO said he worried about the U.S. permanently ceding the market to China. “I really hope President Trump will help us find a solution,” Huang said. “Right now we’re in an awkward place.”

Trump’s trip to Asia was a crucial moment for the future of Nvidia’s business in China, with the summit with Xi setting the tone for trade policy and the AI race. For months leading up to the Xi meeting, Trump indicated he would consider approving exports of a lower-performance Blackwell chip.

He has reversed course since his Asia trip. In an interview with “60 Minutes” that aired on Sunday, Trump said the U.S. would let China deal with Nvidia but not on the most advanced chips. Talking to reporters on Sunday, Trump said of the Blackwell, “we don’t give that chip to other people,” without specifying if he meant the top-performing version or a less powerful Blackwell designed for China.

The Trump-Xi summit ended without a major deal, though the two sides de-escalated tensions, with the U.S. lowering some tariffs on China and Beijing agreeing to resume some purchases of American soybeans. It gives both sides time to build up self-sufficiency in crucial industries such as semiconductors and rare-earth minerals vulnerable to the other’s sanctions.

For Xi, the summit ended without achieving a key near-term objective: a concession on the U.S. chip ban. While Beijing’s long-term strategy is to achieve self-sufficiency and dominance in high technology, securing access to advanced processors now is critical. It would ​give China valuable time to build up its own domestic capabilities. Not getting such a concession slows the timetable for Beijing’s technological ambitions.

Nvidia needs the administration’s permission to sell its most advanced chips to China under export controls first imposed in 2022. The Trump administration has shown a willingness to allow exports and negotiate over restrictions on China’s tech sector, fueling uncertainty in the industry.

Huang’s efforts to sell the Blackwell in China are expected to continue, especially in the lead-up to Trump’s planned visit to China in April. In Washington last week, Huang said that Trump frequently calls him late at night. He has become one of the president’s favorite executives.

The Blackwell generation of graphics processing units, or GPUs, represents the most powerful AI chips Nvidia has designed. Nvidia has said servers made with the B200 GPU are about three times as powerful as those using the predecessor H100 chip for training AI models and about 15 times as powerful when used for inference processes, or the computations that allow AI models to run.

The specifications for the Blackwell chip Nvidia is developing for China haven’t been released. In August, Trump said he would be willing to approve a Blackwell chip with capabilities reduced by 30% to 50%. Once given the signal to move forward, it would take Nvidia two or three months to engineer such a chip, according to people familiar with the matter.

Even if a Blackwell chip is approved for China, questions remain about its viability. In August, the White House reversed an export ban on an older Nvidia chip if the company shared 15% of China revenue with the U.S. government, an arrangement that some lawyers say represents an unconstitutional export tax.

Shortly afterward, Chinese authorities told companies not to buy it. Nvidia hasn’t sold any of those older H20 chips in China since April, the company has said, missing out on billions of dollars in sales.

Nvidia opponents in Congress and at think tanks have countered the company’s lobbying with their own campaign. Before the Trump-Xi meeting, some circulated a video to administration officials showing Huang saying in a July CNN interview that he didn’t think it mattered who wins the AI race, the people said.

The House Select Committee on China called Huang’s words “dangerously naive” and compared the AI race to the Cold War. “This is like arguing that it would not have mattered if the Soviets beat the U.S. to a nuclear weapon,” the committee wrote on X.

The shift would harm the country’s automotive sector, said Industry Minister Melanie Joly

OTTAWA—Canada on Monday took its first formal step to stop Stellantis’s plan to shift production of its Jeep Compass model from a Toronto-area factory to Illinois, arguing the future of the country’s auto sector is at stake.

Canadian Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said the government would serve Stellantis with a notice to start dispute-resolution proceedings. “This action is not symbolic,” she said, in an appearance before a committee of Canadian lawmakers. “We need to be clear and direct toward the company. When a commitment to the Canadian government is not respected, there are consequences.”

She added the fight with Stellantis represents a life-and-death moment for the country’s automotive sector, which accounts for about 120,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector. “When I think about what’s going on in the sector, and this Brampton-Stellantis problem, I know that if we don’t fight that battle, and if we don’t win it, the sector is at stake. I can’t be more clear about that.”

Joly has threatened to sue Stellantis for its decision last month to shift production of its Jeep Compass from a plant in Brampton, Ontario to Illinois. The decision was part of Stellantis’s announcement of a $13 billion investment to increase production in the U.S., amid President Trump’s 25% tariff on foreign-made vehicles. Stellantis employs about 3,000 workers at the Brampton operation.

A spokeswoman for Stellantis said Canada remains an integral part of the company’s North American operations, adding it has neither shut down the Brampton factory nor cut jobs at the plant. She added Stellantis would work with government officials and other parties to find solutions to maintain auto production in the country.

Generally, commercial contracts have a clause that allow for disputes between parties to be resolved through arbitration or dispute resolution.

The Canadian government, along with the province of Ontario, provided over 1 billion Canadian dollars, or the equivalent of U.S. $710 million, to Stellantis in 2022 to modernize its plants in Brampton and Windsor, Ontario, to accommodate production of electric vehicles. Over a year later, Canada sweetened its offer with up to C$15 billion in incentives to Stellantis to upgrade the Windsor facility. Stellantis promised to maintain its production mandate in Brampton as part of the deal.

Canadian officials said the financing was conditional on Stellantis maintaining production and employment at the Brampton factory.

Companies worry Thanksgiving business could be hurt by impasse

WASHINGTON—Hundreds of travel businesses, including casinos, hotels and convention bureaus, are asking Congress to end the monthlong government shutdown by immediately passing a straightforward spending bill, citing worries about the holiday travel season.

The letter signed by nearly 500 companies and groups adds to the pressure on Democrats to give up their drive for a broader deal before voting to reopen the government. Since the shutdown started Oct. 1, government workers including air-traffic controllers and passenger screeners have gone without pay, leading to delays and safety concerns.

Americans “expect and deserve a fully functioning federal government during the peak holiday travel season,” the travel entities wrote in a letter led by the U.S. Travel Association and sent to the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate. “Congress must act without delay to pass a clean continuing resolution to reopen the government immediately and ensure full federal operations are restored in advance of the Thanksgiving travel period.”

Senate Democrats since September have blocked a GOP measure funding the government through Nov. 21, attempting to force Republicans to extend certain subsidies that help 22 million people pay for health insurance. Senate Republicans have said that they will discuss the subsidies only after Democrats agree to reopen the government. The subsidies would add an estimated $350 billion to the federal deficit over a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The travel-industry letter was signed mostly by small businesses and groups that promote travel. But it was also signed by giants including MGM Resorts International, Hilton, Omni Hotels and Resorts, Delaware North and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

The busiest air-travel day last year was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, with more than three million travelers in the skies, according to data from the Transportation Security Administration. Travel plans are typically locked in far in advance, causing anxiety about whether travelers will be willing to make plans with the uncertainty of the shutdown in the background.

“A continued shutdown is likely to significantly suppress travel demand and spending, creating a real threat to American workers, businesses, and the overall economy,” the letter said.

Last week, airline chief executives met at the White House with Vice President JD Vance and called on the Senate to pass a so-called continuing resolution that passed the House on Sept. 19.

“It is time to pass a clean CR, use that as the opportunity to get into a room behind closed doors and negotiate hard,” United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said.

Before that, the nation’s largest federal labor union went public with a call for Congress to pass the same bill.

Conversations about ending the government shutdown continued among senators over the weekend, according to one aide, and senators have been growing more optimistic about finding a way out of the shutdown. But the optimism that swept through the Senate last week still hasn’t resulted in a deal.

The world is focused on America’s lead but Beijing has the means, motive and opportunity to pull ahead

This week, John Thornhill, FT tech columnist and Innovation Editor and Caiwei Chen, MIT Technology Review’s China reporter, ask whether China can beat the US in the battle for technological supremacy.

Do you agree Beijing is on course to overtake Silicon Valley? Join John in a live Q&A on November 13 at 1pm GMT. You can submit a question ahead of time here.

John Thornhill writes

Viewed from abroad, it seems only a matter of time before China emerges as the AI superpower of the 21st century. 

In the west, our initial instinct is to focus on the US’s significant lead in semiconductor expertise, its cutting-edge AI research and its vast investments in data centres. The legendary investor Warren Buffett once warned: “Never bet against America.” He is right that, for more than two centuries, no other “incubator for unleashing human potential” has matched the US.

Today, however, China has the means, motive and opportunity to commit the equivalent of technological murder. When it comes to the mobilisation of the whole-of-society resources needed to develop and deploy AI to maximum effect, it may be just as rash to bet against China. 

The data highlights the trends. In AI publications and patents, China leads. By 2023, China accounted for 22.6 per cent of all citations, compared with 20.9 per cent from Europe and 13 per cent from the US, according to Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Index Report 2025. As of 2023, China also accounted for 69.7 per cent of all AI patents. True, the US maintains a strong lead in the top 100 most cited publications (50 vs 34 in 2023) but its share has been steadily declining. 

The US also outdoes China in top AI research talent — but the gap is narrowing. According to a report from the US Council of Economic Advisers, 59 per cent of the world’s top AI researchers worked in the US in 2019, compared with 11 per cent in China. But by 2022 that ratio was 42 per cent to 28 per cent. 

The Trump administration’s tightening of restrictions for foreign H-1B visa holders may well lead to more Chinese AI researchers in the US returning home. The talent ratio could move further in China’s favour.

Regarding the technology itself, US-based institutions produced 40 of the world’s most notable AI models in 2024, compared with 15 from China. But Chinese researchers have learned to do more with less, and their strongest large language models — including the open-source DeepSeek-V3 and Alibaba’s Qwen 2.5-Max — surpass the best US models in terms of algorithmic efficiency.

Where China is really likely to excel in future is in applying these open-source models. The latest report from Air Street Capital shows that China has now overtaken the US in terms of monthly downloads of AI models. In AI-enabled fintech, ecommerce and logistics, China already outstrips America. 

Perhaps the most intriguing — and potentially the most productive — applications of AI may yet come in hardware, particularly in drones and industrial robotics. With the research field evolving towards embodied AI, China’s advantage in advanced manufacturing will shine through.

Dan Wang, tech analyst and author of Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future, has rightly highlighted the strengths of China’s engineering state in manufacturing — even if he has also shown the damaging effects of applying that engineering mentality in the social sphere. “China has been growing technologically stronger and economically more dynamic in all sorts of ways,” he told me. “But repression is very real. And it is getting worse in all sorts of ways as well.”

I’d be fascinated to hear from you, Caiwei, about your take on the strengths and weaknesses of China’s AI dream. To what extent will China’s engineered social control hamper its technological ambitions? 

Caiwei Chen responds

Hi John!

You’re right that the US still holds a clear lead in frontier research and infrastructure. But “winning” AI can mean many different things. Jeffrey Ding, in his book Technology and the Rise of Great Powers, makes a counterintuitive point: for a general-purpose technology such as AI, long-term advantage often comes down to how widely and deeply technologies spread across society. And China is in a good position to win that race (although murder might be pushing it a bit!).

Chips will remain China’s biggest bottleneck. Export restrictions have throttled access to top GPUs, pushing buyers into grey markets and forcing labs to recycle or repair banned Nvidia stock. Even as domestic chip programmes expand, the performance gap at the very top still stands.

Yet those same constraints have pushed Chinese companies towards a different playbook: pooling compute, optimising efficiency and releasing open-weight models. DeepSeek-V3’s training run, for example, used just 2.6mn GPU-hours — far below the scale of US counterparts. But Alibaba’s Qwen models now rank among the most downloaded open weights globally, and companies such as Zhipu and MiniMax are building competitive multimodal and video models. 

China’s industrial policy means new models can move from lab to implementation fast. Local governments and big enterprises are already rolling out reasoning models in administration, logistics and finance. 

Education is another tell. Major Chinese universities are implementing AI literacy programmes in their curricula, embedding skills proactively before the labour market demands them. The Ministry of Education has also announced plans to integrate AI training for children of all school ages. I’m not sure “engineering state” fully captures China’s relationship with new technologies, but decades of infrastructure building and top-down co-ordination have made the system unusually effective at pushing large-scale adoption, often with far less social resistance than you would see elsewhere. The use at scale, naturally, allows for faster iterative improvements.

The public in China feels the same. Stanford HAI’s 2025 AI index found Chinese respondents to be the most optimistic in the world about AI — far more than in the US or the UK. This is striking, given that China’s economy has slowed since the Covid pandemic for the first time in more than two decades. Many in government and industry now see AI as a much-needed spark. Optimism can be a powerful fuel, but whether it can sustain through slower growth is still an open question.

Social control remains part of the picture, but a different kind of ambition is taking shape. The new generation of Chinese AI founders are the most globally minded I’ve seen, moving fluidly between Silicon Valley hackathons and pitch meetings in Dubai, many fluent in English and in the rhythms of global venture capital. Having watched the last generation wrestle with the burden of a Chinese label, they now build companies that are quietly transnational from the start.

The US may still lead in speed and experimentation, but China could shape how AI becomes part of daily life, both at home and abroad. Speed matters, but speed isn’t the same thing as supremacy.

John Thornhill replies

It’s true, Caiwei, that speed is not the same as supremacy (and murder may be too strong a word). And you’re also right to amplify the point about China’s strength in open-weight models and the US preference for proprietary models. This is not just a struggle between two different countries’ economic models but also between two different ways of deploying technology.  

Even OpenAI’s chief executive Sam Altman admitted earlier this year: “We have been on the wrong side of history here and need to figure out a different open-source strategy.” That’s going to be a very interesting subplot to follow. Who’s called that one right?

Novo and Metsera deny Pfizer’s arguments

Pfizer has filed a second lawsuit against Novo Nordisk and obesity drug start-up Metsera, redoubling its fight to stop Novo’s bid for the biotech by alleging the deal would violate competition laws in the weight-loss drugs market.

In its suit filed in a US district court in Delaware, the US drugmaker said Denmark-based Novo’s proposed acquisition of Metsera would “protect its dominant market position in GLP-1s by capturing and killing a nascent American challenger before it gains the support of Pfizer, one of America’s leading pharmaceutical companies.

“Something is clearly rotten in the state of Denmark,” Pfizer said, quoting from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The complaint accused Novo of “bribing” Metsera, its board and its main investors “to control its fate and forestall Metsera’s game-changing products from coming to market for as long as possible”.

The battle over Metsera, one of the most coveted anti-obesity biotechs, pits Novo, one of the two dominant players in the GLP-1 market trying to rejuvenate its potential, against Pfizer, a potential new entrant whose medicine being developed in-house flopped in clinical trials earlier this year.

New York-based Metsera and Novo quickly fired back at Pfizer on Monday.

“Pfizer is trying to litigate its way to buying Metsera for a lower price than Novo Nordisk,” Metsera said in a statement. “Pfizer’s litigation arguments are nonsense.”

Metsera also asked the Delaware Court of Chancery to reject Pfizer’s request for a restraining order hearing on Tuesday to block Novo’s bid. The Danish drugmaker’s offer is a “vastly superior deal” for the company’s shareholders, Metsera said.

Novo said Pfizer’s antitrust arguments were “fundamentally wrong”.

“This is an intensely competitive space, with at least a dozen other products being developed by major pharma companies,” Novo said in a statement. “We are confident this transaction does not raise any antitrust issues.”

Metsera’s shares were 2.6 per cent lower in early afternoon trading on Monday. Novo shares were down 1.3 per cent while Pfizer’s were little-changed.

Pfizer’s lawsuit filed on Monday targets Metsera’s controlling shareholders Arch Ventures, Validae Health and Population Health Partners, which the US drugmaker alleged “have conspired with Metsera and Novo Nordisk in furtherance of these anti-competitive activities”.

The latest lawsuit escalates of Pfizer’s efforts to block the Danish drug giant’s up to $9bn offer for Metsera, tabled last week. Novo is hoping to outbid Pfizer, which in September agreed to acquire the biotech for $7.3bn.

Pfizer filed its first lawsuit to block the deal on Friday, seeking damages and asking a Delaware judge to put a pause on any deal getting done while litigation is ongoing. In the first sign of Washington weighing in on the deal, the US Federal Trade Commission on Friday fast-tracked antitrust approvals for Pfizer’s deal.

At the centre of the lawsuits over Novo’s bid for Metsera is an unusual two-step deal structure, which pays Metsera’s shareholders $6.5bn almost immediately after signing via a dividend in exchange for a 50 per cent non-voting stake. Novo would then take control of the company upon closure.

Pfizer in its complaint on Monday said Novo’s “novel deal structure would achieve Novo Nordisk’s anti-competitive aims while sidestepping the fact that a Novo Nordisk/Metsera deal was destined to fail”.

Metsera is one of a handful of biotechs developing next-generation weight loss treatments looking to capture a slice of the market that is currently dominated by Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk. It has four clinical trials under way for obesity drugs, including a long-acting monthly injectable and a pill, giving them a competitive advantage compared with existing weight loss treatments.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Eli Lilly chief executive David Ricks said the company would not bid for Metsera. “We’ll let Pfizer and Novo fight over this one,” he said, adding that “obviously Novo has a position in the sector” for weight-loss drugs and that it is up to governments to decide how the deal should proceed.

Via Mark Gurman, Apple has landed on its strategy for the new Siri update coming as soon as iOS 26.4 in the spring of next year. Behind the scenes, much of the new Siri experience will use Google Gemini models.

The custom Gemini model will run on Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers, to help fulfil user requests. Apple has promised that the new Siri will be able to answer personal questions like ‘find the book recommendation from Mom’ by hunting through data on your device and generating the appropriate response on-the-fly.

As previously reported by Bloomberg, the new Siri architecture will have three distinct components; a query planner, a knowledge search system, and a summarizer. Google Gemini models will run on Apple’s servers and provide planner and summarizer capabilities.

User privacy will be preserved by running the Google models on Apple’s server infrastructure without any external data sharing, and on-device personal data will likely be processed using Apple’s own Foundation Models.

The new knowledge search component may also be powered using Gemini models. It will enable Siri to have ‘understanding’ about world topics and trivia, and allow Apple’s voice assistant to answer more general knowledge questions without resorting to third-party integrations like the mediocre ChatGPT integration, or falling back to basic ‘I found this on the web’ search results.

While the backend implementation of Gemini models will be extensive, Bloomberg says Apple is not expected to promote this partnership. Gemini models will just power parts of Siri secretly behind the scenes. All of the new Siri will be marketed as Apple’s technology running on Apple servers, presented using an Apple user interface. The deal will simply help Apple fill in some crucial technology gaps where its own LLM systems are currently not good enough.

The arrangement isn’t too dissimilar from what Samsung does with its Galaxy phones, where many of its ‘Galaxy AI’ features are thin wrappers around Google Gemini features.

The deal is a practical choice that helps Apple finally ship Siri AI features that it first promised to deliver a year ago. Ultimately, Customers don’t really care about implementation details, they just want the iPhone to have features they expect it to have.

We currently expect Apple to announce the new Siri release in the spring alongside the launch of iOS 26.4, in March or April. Apple is also readying a new smart home display device that will take advantage of the new AI assistant capabilities.

D.E. Shaw, one of the Tylenol-maker’s largest shareholders, stood to lose over $200 million but is now expected to break even on its bet

Kimberly-Clark KMB -13.10%decrease; red down pointing triangle not only saved its embattled rival, Kenvue KVUE 14.92%increase; green up pointing triangle, with a $40 billion takeover deal. It also saved activist hedge funds targeting the Tylenol-maker who had been staring down massive losses.

At least four activist investors held stakes in Kenvue’s shares, betting on a turnaround of the company’s operations or an outright sale. What they didn’t anticipate was that the Trump administration would link acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, as a potential cause of autism and open the company to the potential of costly legal action and lost sales.

Kenvue has maintained that the accusations are baseless, and both scientists and medical groups have denounced Trump’s claims as unfounded.

Still, Trump’s claims helped trigger a selloff of almost 22% in Kenvue’s share price before Monday’s deal announcement.

D.E. Shaw, one of the Tylenol-maker’s largest shareholders, stood to suffer some of the biggest losses, with a stake of around 3%, according to people familiar with the matter. The New York-based hedge fund had endured a paper loss of more than $200 million on its investment before Monday, according to the people.

But now because of Kimberly-Clark’s offer, the activist investor is set to break even on its investment, the people said.

Toms Capital Investment Management is another big shareholder in Kenvue with a more than 3% stake that it started building earlier this year.

Last month, at a Morgan Stanley-sponsored hedge fund conference in New York, Ben Pass, the chief investment officer at Toms Capital Investment Management, argued that legal risks around Tylenol were ​​obscuring the company’s value, according to people who heard his presentation.

He also argued the company has valuable brands that if managed better could be worth substantially more than reflected in the current stock price, the people said. Kenvue’s other brands include Aveeno, Band-Aid, Listerine and Neutrogena.

Toms plans to keep holding its Kenvue shares after Monday’s deal, some of the people familiar with the matter said.

“Congratulations to Kimberly-Clark and Kenvue for creating a great American company poised to deliver tremendous benefits for both consumers and shareholders,” Pass said in a statement.

Other activist investors exposed to Kenvue’s selloff include Starboard Value, which has owned shares for at least a year. Dan Loeb’s Third Point had also built a position.

Kenvue spun out of Johnson & Johnson in 2023, going public at $22 per share to help fund growth of J&J’s pharmaceuticals and medical technology businesses. The stock initially popped but has since been in decline as the company struggled to boost organic sales even before the controversy around Tylenol.

Starboard was among the first activists to publicly place a bet on Kenvue’s prospects for a turnaround. Roughly one year ago, the firm took a significant stake and started outwardly pushing for changes. In February, Starboard launched a proxy fight, resulting in the appointment of the firm’s Chief Executive Officer Jeff Smith to Kenvue’s board.

Around that time, Kenvue’s stock was trading at $23.04, and the price had fallen almost 38% before Monday.

It isn’t clear whether Starboard made money from its bet. But it is a lot better off today because of the deal, even as the value of Kimberly-Clark’s bid, at $21.01 per share, is below where Starboard first took a position.

Kimberly-Clark and Kenvue say they expect almost $2 billion in cost savings from the deal in the first three years after the transaction closes.