(Reuters, Washington) Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and several other Democratic senators sent a letter to the Trump administration criticizing its decision in the last round of U.S.-China trade negotiations to temporarily suspend export controls on U.S. technology to Chinese companies, effectively handing over a key national security tool.
On September 29, the U.S. Commerce Department announced an expansion of its export control blacklist, including subsidiaries of listed companies with at least half ownership, aiming to prevent Chinese companies from using subsidiaries to circumvent U.S. export restrictions on chips and other goods and technologies.
However, during negotiations with Chinese President Xi Jinping in October, Trump agreed to delay the implementation of the measures for a year in exchange for a similar delay in implementing large-scale rare earth mineral export controls.
Several Democratic senators sent a letter to Trump on Wednesday (November 12), urging him to reinstate the controls. They argue that delaying the controls "risks allowing cutting-edge computing technology developed in the United States to be used to advance China's agenda rather than the U.S. agenda." Delaying the implementation for a year is tantamount to reopening a "loophole," giving blacklisted companies a year to restructure and circumvent the regulations.
They also said this was yet another instance of Trump "sacrificing national security for a quick handshake deal" to mitigate the trade war disaster he himself had caused.
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White House spokesman Desai issued a statement the following day, arguing, "The Trump administration has established a strict export control system to defend our economy and national security."
Amazon Expresses Support for Legislation to Regulate Chip Exports The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing sources, that Amazon's cloud services subsidiary has expressed its support to the Senate for legislation to further restrict chipmakers like Nvidia from selling artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China.
The Senate is drafting legislation requiring AI chip manufacturers to prioritize high-end domestic chip orders before supplying foreign customers; Microsoft had previously publicly supported the bill.
