(Reuters) -White House National Economic Adviser Kevin Hassett, in an apparent reference to Nvidia's ( NVDA ) H20 AI chip shipments to China, said President Trump and his team decided to let the chips go in a bid to stop China from getting ahead in the race for chips.

"One of the risks that you have to take seriously is that if China's not buying chips from us, then they're innovating, making their own chips. And the one thing we don't want is for them to jump ahead in the race for chips," he told Fox News in an interview.

(Reporting by Ryan Patrick Jones and Bhargav Acharya in Toronto;)