House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said Dec. 17 that lawmakers have forged a compromise on legislation to restrict U.S. outbound investment in China.
The U.S. is planning new export controls to restrict sales of advanced artificial intelligence chips to certain parts of the world in a bid to further limit China’s ability to access them, The Wall Street Journal reported Dec. 13. The rules, which could reportedly come this month, may place caps on shipments of AI chips to certain countries for use in large computing facilities, including nations in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Close U.S. allies would not be affected, the report said. The Biden administration recently sent letters to major chipmakers informing them about some of the restrictions.
Even if a transaction is authorized by a Treasury Department sanctions license or a Commerce Department export license, it still may be subject to prohibitions or notification requirements under Treasury’s new outbound investment rules (see 2410280043), the agency said in new FAQs.
The multilateral Wassenaar Arrangement this month posted a summary of export control changes made during the group’s Dec. 4-5 plenary meeting in Austria, covering editorial changes, clarifications and updated control parameters for various categories under its list of dual-use goods and technologies. Wassenaar’s plenary chair, held this year by Italy, said member states adopted new controls involving suborbital spacecraft and their components as well as technologies used to make metal alloy powders for “high-performance” 3D printing of dual-use technologies. The group also agreed to clarify controls over systems for submersible vehicles, directed energy weapons, epitaxy-covered substrates for semiconductor manufacturing and more.
The U.S. and China need to pause their escalating trade restrictions against one another and have a “serious” conversation about how to manage national security risks around technology to prevent a dangerous decoupling of their two economies, the outgoing leader of a major U.S.-China business organization warned this week.
The Biden administration is planning more policy actions related to artificial intelligence chips -- including possibly more export enforcement -- before President-elect Donald Trump takes over next month, said Ben Buchanan, the White House’s special adviser for AI.
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China appears to be preparing to use its own set of extraterritorial export controls against the U.S. in response to the Biden administration’s latest chip restrictions and Entity List additions, an official with the U.S.-China Business Council said.
The Bureau of Industry and Security is working on a set of FAQs for its recently released China-related semiconductor export control rules (see 2412020016), which should clear up confusion about when certain new foreign direct product rule restrictions take effect and how they apply, a BIS official said this week.
A sticking point in House-Senate negotiations over legislation to restrict U.S. outbound investment in China has been a Senate proposal to give the Securities and Exchange Commission a role, a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee said Dec. 10.