Trump administration considers adding Chinese chipmakers to export blacklist

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The Trump administration plans to put a number of Chinese chips manufacturers on a black export list, but some officials want to delay this step to avoid efforts to distribute a long -term trade agreement with China.

The Ministry of Commerce collected a list of Chinese companies – including the Chipmmer Memory Changxin (CXMT) – to add to the “entity list”, according to five people who are aware of this issue.

Many people have said that the Industry and Security Office, the arm of the Ministry of Commerce that oversees export controls, has also formulated a list of companies affiliated with the ICSI, the largest chip maker in China, and Yangtze Memory Technologies, the largest memory chip maker. SMIC and YMTC are already in the menu.

But the timing of the move is complicated by the commercial deal that China and the United States agreed to in Geneva at the weekend to reduce the 90 -day mutual tariff to help reach a wider business deal.

Some Trump administration officials have argued that export controls for critical Chinese groups can now endanger negotiations.

But others indicated that the Republicans criticized the Biden administration to delay the taking of competitive measures against China to facilitate what he called “zombie diplomacy”.

Chinese hawks have long been pushed to target CXMT, which quickly expands its share of the DRAM global memory chips market. The Chipmaker maker also leads the efforts made to become a player in developing the HBM memory (HBM), which is very important to operate artificial intelligence models.

Adding chips to the black list of export is the latest effort by the United States to make it very difficult for China to obtain advanced American chips and manufacturing technology that can be used to help update its army.

American companies cannot sell Chinese groups in the list of entities without government licenses, which are increasingly difficult to obtain.

US security officials are concerned that it was very easy for China to obtain American technology, which supported its army in developing non -sound weapons and nuclear weapons modeling.

Chinese companies cannot be reached for suspension. The Chinese embassy in the United States refused to comment on the issue, but she said: “China is firmly opposing the United States to overcome the concept of national security, abuse export controls, and to ban and suppress China.”

The Ministry of Trade and the White House rejected both.