US Should Be ‘Careful’ About Chip Export Curbs, Lawmaker Says
The U.S. should ensure its export controls are not so restrictive that they harm the ability of American computing chip manufacturers to compete internationally, Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., said this week.
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McCormick, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said U.S. chipmakers need to sell their products overseas to be profitable, and they will lose market share to China if they face too many export barriers. He said he discussed the matter with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at a company conference last week.
“If we’re not the industry standard of the world, who will be? Certainly, it’ll be China because they are investing heavily,” the lawmaker said at a Hudson Institute event. “We have to be very careful that we don’t market ourselves out of world competition.”
While the Biden administration’s AI diffusion export control rule was intended to protect sensitive technology, it was problematic because it inhibited the export of “just our basic chips,” McCormick said. The Trump administration decided in May to rescind the rule, and it plans to issue a replacement (see 2505070039 and 2509040038). McCormick was among the lawmakers who had urged the Commerce Department to revamp the Biden-era rule (see 2504140054).
McCormick is also concerned about a bill introduced by Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., that would require U.S. manufacturers of advanced AI chips to make their products available to American firms before selling them to China and other U.S. arms embargoed countries. While calling Banks one of his “very good friends,” he described the bill, the Guaranteeing Access and Innovation for National Artificial Intelligence Act, or Gain AI Act, as “basically the Diffusion Act 2.0.”
“We have to be careful because if we are not the industry standard, we will be playing catch up,” McCormick said. “That doesn’t mean we give away our best stuff that’s going to help us in military technologies, cybersecurity, other things that we’d be vulnerable to, but if we want to be the industry standard, if we want to be competitive, we cannot inhibit ourselves with state laws or federal laws.”
The Gain AI Act is included in the Senate-passed FY 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which is being reconciled with the House NDAA (see 2509240062). Banks has proposed several changes to his bill to try to soften opposition (see 2510240052). House Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar, R-Mich., has introduced a stand-alone version of the Gain AI Act (see 2510300044).
Asked whether McCormick plans to lobby against the Gain AI Act, a spokesperson said in a statement that the lawmaker “intends to research this provision further and consult with his colleagues, industry, and other stakeholders to make sure we achieve a solution that promotes American leadership in AI globally.”