“The American tech stack should be the global standard, just as the American dollar is the standard by which every country builds on,” Mr. Huang said during a podcast recorded last week in Washington with the Special Competitive Studies Project, a think tank.

Mr. Huang delivered that same message to Mr. Trump last week in the Oval Office, two people familiar with the meeting said. Mr. Sacks was seated nearby, lending his support. By the end of the nearly hourlong meeting, Mr. Trump said Nvidia’s chips could return to China.

Mr. Lutnick said on CNBC that the approval was linked to ongoing trade talks with China, which recently agreed to supply rare earth magnets to American companies. The idea was to sell Chinese businesses Nvidia’s fourth-best chip, he said, so that “they get addicted to the American technology stack.”