Leaders of a powerful US semiconductor trade organization are petitioning Washington to cease imposing sanctions on chip sales to China, telling DC leaders that additional restrictions could backfire on domestic companies, according to reports in the American news media.
According to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), regardless of America’s national security concerns, American chip-makers require ongoing access to the Chinese markets, which are the largest commercial market for semiconductors.
The organization argued that additional “overly broad, ambiguous, and at times unilateral” constraints imposed by the US risk “disrupting supply chains, causing significant market uncertainty, and prompting continued escalatory retaliation by China.”
The association’s statement was delivered as the Biden administration is considering further restrictions on the flows of artificial intelligence chips being delivered to China which would limit the amount of computing power that chips being delivered there are allowed to have.
Intel, Qualcomm, and Nvidia executives are looking at ways to lobby administration officials to withhold any further imposition of export restrictions.
For several months now the US and Chinese government have been engaged in a dispute over the delivery of advanced semiconductor technologies and other technologies to China.
In October of last year the Biden administration announced it was imposing measures which were designed to simultaneously strengthen the United State’s technological advantage over other nations and limit the access China had to advanced technology. The measures included sweeping export controls which effectively eliminated all Chinese access to certain semiconductor chips made with US equipment.
In May, China retaliated by announcing a security review had determined the nation could no longer use memory chips produced by Micron, the largest US producer of memory chips.
Then in early July, China announced it would require special licenses to export gallium and germanium, two key metals used in the manufacture of semiconductor chips.
