US curbs on chip sales to China could backfire – industry group
Executives from a major US semiconductor trade organization have requested that Washington halt further sanctions on chip sales to China, warning that additional curbs could backfire on domestic companies, according to media reports on Monday.
American chip-makers need continued access to China, which is the world’s largest commercial market for commodity semiconductors, despite Washington’s economic and national security concerns, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) said.
The group argued that further “overly broad, ambiguous, and at times unilateral” restrictions by US officials risk “disrupting supply chains, causing significant market uncertainty, and prompting continued escalatory retaliation by China.”
The statement comes as the administration of US President Joe Biden considers tightening a rule designed to slow the flow of artificial intelligence chips to China by clamping down on the amount of computing power the chips can have.
Executives at Intel, Qualcomm, and Nvidia are reportedly planning to lobby the Biden administration to refrain from further measures “until it engages more extensively with industry and experts to assess the impact of current and potential restrictions to determine whether they are narrow and clearly defined, consistently applied, and fully coordinated with allies.”
Washington and Beijing have been involved in a dispute over semiconductors and other advanced technologies for several months.
Last October, Washington announced measures aimed at bolstering US tech capabilities and limiting China’s access to advanced technology. The Biden administration introduced sweeping export controls, effectively cutting China off from certain semiconductor chips made with US equipment.
Beijing retaliated in May by banning memory chips manufactured by Micron, the largest US producer, claiming that the company had failed a security review.
Earlier this month, China announced that starting in August, special licenses will be required to export gallium and germanium, two key metals used to make computer chips.
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