A former adviser to Joe Biden’s Commerce Department, Alasdair Phillips-Robins, told Reuters that the levy suggests the Trump administration “is trading away national security protections for revenue for the Treasury.”
Huawei close to unveiling new AI chip tech
The end of a 90-day truce between the US and China is rapidly approaching, with the US signaling that the truce will likely be extended soon as Trump attempts to get a long-sought-after meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping.
For China, gutting export curbs on chips remains a key priority in negotiations, the Financial Times reported Sunday. But Nvidia’s H20 chips, for example, are lower priority than high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, sources told FT.
Chinese state media has even begun attacking the H20 chips as a Chinese national security risk. It appears that China is urging a boycott on H20 chips due to questions linked to a recent Congressional push to require chipmakers to build “backdoors” that would allow remote shutdowns of any chips detected as non-compliant with export curbs. That bill may mean that Nvidia’s chips already allow for US surveillance, China seemingly fears. (Nvidia has denied building such backdoors.)
Biden banned HBM exports to China last year, specifically moving to hamper innovation of Chinese chipmakers Huawei and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC).
Currently, US firms AMD and Micron remain top suppliers of HBM chips globally, along with South Korean firms Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, but Chinese firms have notably lagged behind, South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported. One source told FT that China “had raised the HBM issue in some” Trump negotiations, likely directly seeking to lift Biden’s “HBM controls because they seriously constrain the ability of Chinese companies, including Huawei, to develop their own AI chips.”
For Trump, the HBM controls could be seen as leverage to secure another trade win. However, some experts are hoping that Trump won’t play that card, citing concerns from the Biden era that remain unaddressed.
