Lawmaker: Relying Only on Export Controls to Counter China Is 'Losing Bet’
The U.S. can’t rely only on export controls to stay ahead of China technologically, said Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He also said he believes the administration’s willingness to ease export controls on certain advanced chips doesn’t necessarily mean the U.S. is becoming less hawkish against China.
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Himes, speaking during an event this week hosted by the German Marshall Fund think tank, said he believes the U.S. uses many tools and policies that are “short-term valuable,” but when used alone, he said, they will not help America maintain its lead over China in areas like AI, quantum and biotechnology. One of those is export controls.
“You can also spend a lot of time, as we do, on things like export control. Dual-use stuff, [the International Traffic in Arms Regulations], etc. You can do that, and you should do that,” Himes said. “But that is also not an enduring, structural thing.”
“If you're betting against the propagation of technology, any technology, especially to an entity like China,” Himes said, then “you're making a losing bet. The question is just when you will lose.”
Himes argued that the U.S. should be more focused on maintaining its “innovative edge,” which he said is driven by “robust and remarkable capital markets,” its willingness to accept immigrants that work on advanced technologies, and the U.S.’s “uniquely innovative, commercially oriented, deep research academia.” He said he’s concerned that Trump administration policies are pushing away talented foreign students and researchers from U.S. schools.
“We are targeting, as a matter of deliberate policy, two of the three legs of the stool,” Himes said. “We're doing all that we can to damage that deep R&D academic core which is so important to us.”
Himes was also asked whether he believes the number of China hawks in Washington, including those working for the administration, is dwindling. Lindsay Gorman, managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s Technology Program and the event’s moderator, said that “competition with China was the prevailing political consensus here in Washington” just recently.
But over the last year, the Trump administration has lifted controls on certain advanced chip exports to China and has reportedly refrained from imposing any major new export controls on China to avoid disrupting the trade truce reached between the two sides in South Korea in October (see 2512040021).
“I think it's undeniable that the administration has taken steps that some would see, perhaps, is not so tough-nosed -- allowing export licenses for the Nvidia H200 AI chips, for example,” Gorman said.
She pointed out that Congress has “actually stepped up” and introduced several pieces of legislation aimed at curbing certain sensitive exports to China, including the Gain AI Act, which would require U.S. manufacturers of advanced AI chips to make their products available to American firms before selling them to China (see 2512100015).
In addition, the House voted last month to pass the Remote Access Security Act, which aims to close a “loophole” that allows China to use cloud service providers to access advanced U.S. chips remotely (see 2601130006), while the House Foreign Affairs Committee recently approved a bill that would increase congressional oversight of sales of advanced AI chips to China and other “countries of concern” (see 2601210037).
While the U.S. has eased controls, Congress has worked to “put some of these restrictions back on the table,” Gorman said.
“Are we seeing a sea change when it comes to U.S.-China relations?” she asked. “Are there fewer China hawks, if you will, driving our strategic competition policy?”
Himes said he still believes there are China hawks in the administration, and he doesn’t believe Trump’s decision to allow Nvidia chips exports to China is an indication of how tough the president is on Beijing.
“The president, who is single-handedly responsible for opening up H200 chips to China, is just very transactional in his thinking,” Himes said. “He thinks about these things in terms of deals, rather than the way people traditionally think about the downside associated with China having H200. So that doesn't mean that there's a lot fewer hawks.”
Himes said his larger worry is “that there's a ton of hawkishness out there that doesn't answer the ‘then what’ question.” He said parts of Washington are focusing on studying the best tools the U.S. should use against China if it, for example, decides to invade Taiwan. But “almost nobody in town is talking about how do we reduce the probability of that kind of conflict,” he said, “which we better think about.”