Baidu, a major Chinese artificial intelligence company, said it doesn’t expect to be severely impacted by the U.S.’s new China-related chip controls. Speaking during a Nov. 22 earnings call, Executive Vice President Dou Shen said the impact of the restrictions will be “quite limited in the near future,” adding that a “large portion” of its AI cloud business “and even wider AI business does not rely too much on the highly advanced chips.” The company also has “already stocked enough in hand” for “the part of our businesses that needs advanced chips.”
Vishay Precision Group, a U.S. sensor technology company, may have violated U.S. export filing requirements, the company said in a Securities & Exchange Commission filing this month. The company said it submitted a voluntary self-disclosure to the U.S. government after it determined that “certain export shipments of products from one of its subsidiaries” didn’t comply with filing requirements of the Bureau of Industry and Security's Export Administration Regulations and the Census Bureau’s Foreign Trade Regulations.
The Netherlands doesn’t plan to mirror the U.S.’s recent chip restrictions on China (see 2210070049) “one-to-one” and will seek to impose export controls “on our own terms,” Liesje Schreinemacher, the country’s foreign trade minister, told Dutch news outlet NRC Nov. 18. Schreinemacher said the Netherlands has been talking “intensively” with the U.S. about export controls for two years, the report said, but a consensus on chip restrictions hasn’t been reached. But she also said a deal “could be reached within a few months,” the report said.
The State Department again extended a September 2020 rule that temporarily suspended restrictions on certain defense exports to Cyprus, the agency said Nov. 21. The 2020 rule (see 2009020045) amended the International Traffic in Arms Regulations to relax restrictions surrounding exports of nonlethal defense goods and services to Cyprus, and also eased restrictions on reexports, retransfers and temporary imports. The agency extended the rule in 2021 before deciding to extend it again this year (see 2209190009). The extended rule, effective Nov. 22, will now last through Sept. 30, 2023.
The Bureau of Industry and Security on Nov. 17 updated its Pakistan due diligence guidance. The guidance includes information on Pakistan-related license requirements for controlled items destined for nuclear or missile activities, restrictions on U.S. persons activities and best practices for screening customers in Pakistan.
The U.S. and EU will hold a virtual "stakeholders outreach event" Nov. 21 to discuss the impact of export controls for dual-use research and academic communities. The event -- hosted by the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council's Export Control Working Group -- will "address the concerns and expectations of US and EU research community for the work of" the export control working group "moving forward." The event will feature remarks by the group's chairs and co-chairs and will include an open discussion to "gather feedback and ideas for future initiatives in this area." Registration closes Nov. 17.
China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation is expecting its fourth quarter revenue this year to drop by 13% to 15% due in part to new U.S. export controls, the company said in an earnings release last week. SMIC said the drop in revenue is because “customers need time to interpret the newly released US export control rules” and “due to the weak demand in the mobile phone and consumer market.” The new controls, announced by the Commerce Department last month (see 2210070049), will “have an adverse impact on our production and operation,” SMIC said. “We have maintained close communications with suppliers, while the clarification of some definitions in the new rules and the assessment of impact on the Company are still in progress.”
U.S. semiconductor company Nvidia is offering a new advanced chip to Chinese customers that complies with the Commerce Department’s new export restrictions (see 2210070049), a company spokesperson said Nov. 8. The person said Nvidia's new A800 chip, which recently went into production, is designed to meet U.S. licensing requirements. "The NVIDIA A800 GPU, which went into production in Q3, is another alternative product to the NVIDIA A100 GPU for customers in China," the spokesperson said in a Nov. 8 email. "The A800 meets the U.S. Government’s clear test for reduced export control and cannot be programmed to exceed it." The spokesperson declined to say if Nvidia had confirmed with Commerce whether the chip complies with U.S. export regulations. Reuters first reported the new chip.
A U.S. hardware supplier said it may have violated U.S. export controls by selling to a Chinese foundry on the Entity List. MaxLinear, which sells highly integrated radio-frequency analog and mixed-signal semiconductor products, disclosed it submitted an "initial notification" of voluntary self-disclosure to the Bureau of Industry and Security in October and its sale may have violated the Export Administration Regulations because it never obtained a license.
U.S. chip companies may need to wait as long as nine months before the U.S. can come to an agreement with allies on multilateral China chip controls, Bloomberg reported Nov. 3. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, speaking last week to Lam Research, KLA and other chip companies, said the U.S. is working on an agreement with the Netherlands and Japan, but such a deal could take six to nine months, the report said.