NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang speaks during a press Q&A during NVIDIA GTC in San Jose, California on March 19, 2024. Image: Megan Crouse/TechRepublic
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang spoke to CNN about supporting ‘the craft of making things.’ Plus, China may be open to NVIDIA again.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said he supports onshoring US manufacturing during a wide-ranging interview on Sunday with CNN journalist Fareed Zakaria.
Huang’ statement aligns with President Donald Trump’s priorities and carries the weight of NVIDIA’s dominance of the GPU market as the world’s first $4 trillion company.
“That passion, the skill, the craft of making things; the ability to make things is valuable for economic growth — it’s value for a stable society with people who can create a wonderful life and a wonderful career without having to get a PhD in physics,” Huang said.
He specifically mentioned the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which is one of the major fabrication companies behind NVIDIA chips. Building chips in the US would help reduce pressure on Taiwan, CNN reported Huang as saying. TSMC has already built a plant in Phoenix, Arizona. In March 2025, TSMC added a $100 billion investment to build data centers in the US to its overall commitments of $160 billion in US sites.
“Having a rich ecosystem of industries and manufacturing so that we could, on the one hand, make the United States better but also reduce our dependency — sole dependency — on other countries, is a smart move,” Huang said.
NVIDIA and TSMC bringing manufacturing onto American soil would align with the Trump administration’s focus on increasing the domestic manufacturing base.
This is far from the first time Huang’s company has been uniquely positioned to effect global competition between technology companies; both former President Joe Biden and the Trump administration have imposed restrictions limiting NVIDIA from exporting its products to China.
On July 14, NVIDIA announced it is filing applications with the US government to sell the NVIDIA H20 GPU in China. The H20 is limited compared to its chips outside China.
The company has also created a type of RTX PRO GPU consistent with export regulations for sale in China.
With NVIDIA chips powering much of today’s generative AI, Huang had a lot to say on the subject. He is “overwhelmingly positive” on generative AI, saying: “Some harm will be done. The world has to jump on top of it when it happens, but it will be overwhelmingly, incredibly powerful.”
In addition, he was optimistic about the use of AI in drug discovery and robotics, the latter of which NVIDIA is pursuing.
This story was updated with details about NVIDIA’s new products for the Chinese market on July 15.
Read the latest on US tariffs: President Donald Trump set a 30% tariff on the EU and Mexico starting August 1.
Megan Crouse has a decade of experience in business-to-business news and feature writing, including as first a writer and then the editor of Manufacturing.net. Her news and feature stories have appeared in Military & Aerospace Electronics, Fierce Wireless, TechRepublic, and eWeek. She copyedited cybersecurity news and features at Security Intelligence. She holds a degree in English Literature and minored in Creative Writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
