Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters in Stockholm, Sweden, that the Chinese delegation spoke too early when they said the two sides agreed to another 90 days at current tariff levels, because the president is the one to decide. However, in a later interview with CNBC, Bessent said the meetings had been "highly satisfactory."
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California-based electronic design automation firm Cadence will pay more than $140 million in combined civil fines, criminal penalties and forfeitures after the U.S. said it violated export controls against China. The company pleaded guilty to illegally exporting EDA hardware, software and semiconductor design intellectual property technology to Chinese entities, including a university and company on the Entity List.
The Trump administration is still wrestling with how exactly to scope its replacement for the Biden-era AI diffusion rule, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said.
The Bureau of Industry and Security has been ordered in recent months to avoid tough export controls on China as Washington tries to strike a trade deal with Beijing, the Financial Times reported July 28. The report comes after Trump administration officials said they planned to lift restrictions on Nvidia's H20 chip exports to China as part of an agreement that saw Beijing ease restrictions on rare earths (see 2507150013). The White House and BIS didn't respond to our requests for comment.
In separate letters to the Trump administration, more than 20 former national security officials along with five Senate Democrats urged the Commerce Department to reverse its decision to approve exports of Nvidia’s advanced AI chips to China.
The U.S. and the EU reached a trade deal this week that will include a 15% U.S. tariff on most EU exports and will eliminate duties on both sides for other items, including aircraft parts and certain semiconductor equipment, agricultural products and more. The EU also will buy advanced American AI chips along with more American energy as part of the bloc’s effort to phase out purchases from Russia, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
Cadence, a California-based electronic design automation firm, will pay more than $140 million in combined civil fines, criminal penalties and forfeitures to resolve allegations that it illegally exported technology to Chinese entities, DOJ and the Bureau of Industry and Security announced July 28. The company pleaded guilty to illegally exporting EDA hardware, software and semiconductor design intellectual property technology to the National University of Defense Technology, a university added to the Commerce Department's Entity List for its ties to the Chinese military, DOJ said.
At least $1 billion worth of Nvidia advanced AI chips were smuggled into China about a month after the Trump administration placed new export controls on the company's less advanced chips, the Financial Times reported July 24. Multiple Chinese distributors in May began selling Nvidia's B200 chips to suppliers of data centers that serve Chinese AI groups, the report said, adding that those chips are more advanced than Nvidia's H20s, which the Trump administration restricted in April (see 2504160026). Contracts reviewed by the Financial Times for sales during that time period showed shipments "estimated to be more than" $1 billion.
The Trump administration should carefully study any new export controls on the subsystems of semiconductor manufacturing equipment so it doesn’t unintentionally undercut U.S. chip tooling firms, wrote Ruby Scanlon, a research assistant with the Center for a New American Security.