Current US Approach to Chip Tool Controls Is 'Unsustainable,' Researchers Say
The U.S. government likely needs to change the way it's trying to convince Japan, the Netherlands and other allies to impose export controls on a broader set of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, including by potentially offering them economic incentives and loosening some existing export restrictions, researchers said in a new report this month. The authors also said the Bureau of Industry and Security should survey American chip toolmakers to better understand global chip markets, which can help it maximize the effectiveness of its current export restrictions.
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The Biden administration has spent months convincing the Netherlands and Japan to increase tooling restrictions (see 2407170040 and 2310270044), although the report, issued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noted that those talks reportedly “broke down” over restrictions on “technologies such as memory and mature logic chips in controls on chipmaking equipment.”
CSIS said the U.S. needs to find a way to bring its allies “on equal footing” with its own chip export controls. It also said those allies don't just include the Dutch and the Japanese, but also South Korea, Israel and Taiwan.
One strategy could involve increasing foreign direct product rule restrictions, which could capture a broader range of foreign tools that are made with certain U.S.-origin content. BIS had reportedly been drafting a rule that could raise FDP rule restrictions on certain chip-related items (see 2407310016), but the rule may not apply to the Netherlands, Japan and South Korea, which the report said would undercut the “effectiveness” of those new controls.
Technology policy analysts have said the incoming Trump administration likely will be more willing than the Biden administration to incur the diplomatic costs that come from sharply increasing FDP rule restrictions for equipment sold by the Dutch and Japanese (see 2411140037). But CSIS warned that this strategy risks “further upsetting” U.S. allies and may incentivize foreign countries to remove American technology from their supply chains.
The U.S. can also continue talks with allies started by the Biden administration to try to convince them to expand their controls, the report said, including in multilateral settings. But CSIS said the current strategy of “appealing to shared national security concerns” about China “clearly” hasn’t worked.
This time, the U.S. should offer an “expanded menu of carrots and sticks,” such as sharing more intelligence or promising more economic opportunities, the report said. Other forms of “mutual benefit” might “be necessary to convince allies to cooperate.”
CSIS also said the U.S. may need to loosen some of its existing controls to “achieve multilateralization” -- a strategy that meets its allies halfway. The report said the U.S. could remove restrictions on some of the more “contentious areas,” such as memory chip production, or 14 nanometer and 16 nanometer chips, which the semiconductor industry doesn’t consider advanced.
Loosening those controls could be “paired with efforts to improve enforcement,” CSIS said, which has been a challenge since BIS introduced its first set of China-related chip rules in October 2022 (see 2302020034 and 2310170055).
It also called on BIS to better understand “how and where” its chip controls are hurting American semiconductor companies, including through surveys of the chip industry. BIS should specifically gather information on the share of Chinese tenders won by U.S. chip equipment makers “relative to Chinese and third-country suppliers,” it said.
If the survey shows that U.S. export controls are having large “adverse impacts” on U.S. companies, BIS should study how to mitigate those impacts, the report said.
However the U.S. decides to tackle chip tooling controls, it needs to design future restrictions “in ways deeply attuned to the nuances of semiconductor competitive dynamics” and so the restrictions don’t undermine U.S. technology leadership, CSIS said.
“The current approach, which results in U.S. companies losing market share to Chinese and third-country competitions, is unsustainable -- particularly considering how Chinese circumvention efforts arguably undercut the controls’ national security objectives.”