Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. You can find any article by searching for the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., one of the primary movers behind the Chips Act, told an audience that more domains need policymakers' attention so that they don't wake up to find that China has become dominant in an important emerging technology. He noted that before becoming a politician, he "was in the telecommunication space," and said that realizing that China is dominating 5G with two heavily subsidized champion companies was the "final wake-up call" that engagement and deeper trade with China is not the right way to go.
A Chinese invasion of Taiwan, or any other type of “conflict” initiated against the island by Beijing, would have “immediate and dramatically negative effects on China’s ability to import and export goods” and would spur a range of international sanctions, the Center for Strategic and International Studies said in a Nov. 22 report. CSIS said the U.S. and other Western countries would impose strict sanctions and export controls against China, which would “probably persist for months or perhaps years after a conflict, even if U.S. military forces are defeated” in the case of a war.
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.”
Semiconductor companies are still awaiting licensing decisions on their chip-related activities involving China under the U.S.’s new export controls, with some concerned that licenses awarded to their competitors could hurt their revenue. In earnings calls and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission this month, U.S. chip and technology companies said they continue to prepare for drops in sales to China and that they fear Chinese customers may soon replace them with alternative suppliers, causing some U.S. companies to permanently lose their market share in China.
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. You can find any article by searching for the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
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 U.S. needs to abandon the current model of multilateral export control regimes and move toward control agreements with smaller groups of allies in specific technology areas, said Liza Tobin, the National Security Council’s former China director. Tobin, speaking during an Emerging Technology Technical Advisory Committee meeting last week, also said the U.S. should look to impose technology-specific controls on items destined to China rather than end-use- and end-user-based controls, which are proving increasingly ineffective.
The Bureau of Industry and Security’s new Unverified List policies, which allow the agency to move a company from the UVL to the Entity List if it can’t complete an end-use check within 60 days, likely will lead to an uptick in companies added to the Entity List, said Nazak Nikahtar, former acting BIS undersecretary. Nikakhtar said she believes many Chinese companies added to the UVL won’t participate in an end-use check that meets the U.S.’s standards.
The U.K. this week ordered a subsidiary of China’s Wingtech Technology to divest from Britain's largest microchip facility, Nexperia Newport (formerly Newport Wafer Lab), several months after U.S. lawmakers urged the Biden administration to intervene in the acquisition. The U.K.’s Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy’s decision will force Wingtech’s subsidiary, Netherlands-based Nexperia, to sell at least 86% of its stake in Nexperia Newport “within a specified period and by following a specified process.” Nexperia acquired the stake in then Newport Wafer Lab in 2021.