My Take | Trump is right to reverse Biden’s failed curbs on chips to China
Ban not only failed to isolate Chinese advances in AI, but also gave companies such as SMIC and Huawei the chance to become global powerhouses
China policy – or for that matter any policy – coming out of the Donald Trump White House is not usually known for being the product of considered thought and deliberation.
But allowing China to resume buying more legacy chips other than the most advanced ones may be its most rational and defensible yet.
Negotiations after Geneva and London led to China loosening export controls on rare earths and the US allowing chipmakers such as Nvidia to resume selling its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China. That’s usually interpreted as a quid pro quo. However, it’s clear Washington also thinks it’s good policy as well as good for business.
H20 was tailor-made for the China market when the US started imposing chip curbs. But it eventually fell under expanding US restrictions covering even legacy ones. At one time, Gina Raimondo, Joe Biden’s commerce secretary, boasted that she would tighten the curbs every time a firm like Nvidia tried to get around them.
But it soon became clear that the curbs weren’t working. First, the squeeze actually made China move quickly to refashion its entire chipmaking industry. When Raimondo was making an official visit to Beijing in the summer of 2023, Huawei released its Kirin 9000s chip for its Mate 60 smartphones, using China’s SMIC 7nm node. That was a clear challenge to Raimondo and her boss at the White House.
Soon, articles questioning the effectiveness of the chip curbs were appearing in mainstream American media, including Foreign Affairs, the semi-official publication of the US foreign policy establishment.