The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is weighing additional curbs on sales of semiconductor equipment and AI memory chips to China that would escalate the U.S. crackdown on Beijing’s tech ambitions but stop short of some stricter measures previously considered, according to people familiar with the matter.
The restrictions could be unveiled as soon as next week, said the people, who emphasized that the timing and contours of the rules have changed several times, and that nothing is final until they’re published. The measures follow months of deliberations by U.S. officials, negotiations with allies in Japan and the Netherlands and intense lobbying by American chip equipment makers who’ve warned that tougher measures would bring catastrophic harm to their business.
The latest proposal has key differences from earlier drafts, the people said. The first is which Chinese companies the U.S. would add to a trade restriction list. The U.S. had previously considered sanctioning six suppliers to Huawei — the telecom giant at the center of China’s tech industry — and officials are aware of at least a half-dozen more, the people said. But they now plan to add only some of those Huawei suppliers to the entity list, with the notable omission of ChangXin Memory Technologies, which is trying to develop AI memory chip technology.