The Bureau of Industry and Security does not set chip prices, but it effectively sets chip markets. When Commerce adds compute thresholds to the Entity List or tightens performance parameters on export licenses — as it has done in successive rounds targeting advanced GPUs — it draws a hard line between who can buy cutting-edge silicon and who cannot. China, which has historically absorbed roughly 20–25 percent of NVDA's data-center revenue, sits on the wrong side of that line. The mechanism is structural, not cyclical: every incremental tightening locks in the bifurcation and forces capital to route around the restriction.
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