“Trump encourages Jensen to ‘fight to preserve his position’ before resigning”

U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly encouraged NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, who resigned due to suspicions of involvement in Chinese spies, to continue fighting to retain his position right up until his resignation.

The New York Times (NYT) reported on the 12th (local time) that President Trump called Jensen Huang on the 10th and said this, citing two sources who received the conversation.

President Trump continued to defend Jensen Huang even after U.S. intelligence officials determined that he had an inappropriate relationship with Alice Huang, who is suspected of being recruited by Chinese intelligence agencies.

President Trump received at least two warnings about the relationship between Jensen Huang and Alice Huang, late last year and spring this year, but took no action, and even brought Jensen Huang with him when he visited China last May.

Even when the two people's affair and the woman's suspicions of being a Chinese spy were recently revealed to the public, President Trump publicly praised Jensen Huang and expressed sympathy. After the news of Jensen Huang's resignation broke that day, he was called a "legend" in a social media post.

Trump's associates said the president's response to issues about Jensen Huang's private life was focused on the issue of his affair rather than national security. He dismissed claims that Alice Hwang's presence could pose a threat to the nation.

Aides explain that the reason President Trump surrounded Jensen Huang was because he had high expectations for him.

President Trump is said to have viewed Jensen Huang as a modern-day Henry Ford (American automobile industrialist) leading the technology field that will define the 21st century, and Nvidia as a company that could virtually fail.

He promised to revive the coal and steel industries during his first term, but in a situation where those industries failed to regain their former status, artificial intelligence (AI) was a new opportunity to lead the rebuilding of the U.S. manufacturing industry. President Trump believed that the data center construction boom and the resulting massive demand for electricity could lead to a revival of manufacturing and economic growth, supporting the U.S. economy, which was at risk of recession. For this reason, President Trump evaluated AI company executives as the most important businessmen in the United States, and viewed Jensen Huang as a key figure among them, aides said.

Jensen Huang also lived up to these expectations. He announced in April last year that he would produce AI infrastructure worth up to $500 billion (about 700 trillion won) in the United States. In May of that year, he accompanied Trump on his trip to the Middle East and supported the announcement of a contract to purchase Nvidia chips from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). At the 'AI Competition Victory Summit' event held in Washington DC in July of that year, praise was poured out, saying, "The unique strength of the United States that no other country has is President Trump."

Jensen Huang persuaded Trump that Nvidia should sell its chips as widely as possible so that the world could develop based on American technology rather than Chinese technology. Accordingly, Trump allowed Nvidia to sell certain models of chips to China, despite warnings from China hardliners about national security threats. Within the Trump administration, some responded that they were surprised at how much influence Jensen Huang had on the president.

The NYT pointed out that President Trump was originally far from a traditional public hardliner.

Although he aggressively criticized trade issues, he preferred an agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping to a long-term trade war, and was generally uninterested in China's human rights issues.

Aides reported that President Trump privately questioned why the United States would go to war for Taiwan.

The NYT reported that he once held up a teaspoon to lunch customers at a golf course and said, "This is Taiwan," to show his disdain for Taiwan.