The Senate is “likely” to vote on the annual defense policy bill this week, which could include the Senate-passed U.S. Innovation and Competition Act of 2021, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said. In a Nov. 14 letter to lawmakers, Schumer said “there seems to be fairly broad” bipartisan support for adding USICA to the National Defense Authorization Act, which would allow a USICA negotiation with the House “to be completed alongside” the NDAA before the end of the year. The House plans to write its own version of USICA.

Qualcomm supports “targeted and rule-based export controls” as one of several long-term federal policy recommendations for curing the semiconductor shortage, the chipmaker told the Bureau of Industry and Security in comments posted Nov. 10. Washington should “control emerging technologies,” consistent with the 2018 Export Control Reform Act, by imposing targeted and rule-based export controls and avoid disrupting semiconductor supply, especially in legacy node chipsets,” Qualcomm said. “Unilateral controls would only hinder Qualcomm and other U.S. companies from selling in foreign markets, undermining their R&D investments and disadvantaging them against their foreign competitors.” Some international rivals already have “both the technology capability and funding to develop global leadership in these areas,” it said. Submissions to BIS were due Nov. 8 for the agency's September request for information as it prepares a report to the White House on the chip shortage and semiconductor supply chain issues (see 2109230018).

Former Broadcom engineer Peter Kisang Kim was indicted by a federal grand jury for stealing company trade secrets, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California said. Kim, a resident of Ben Lomond, California, worked as a principal design engineer at Broadcom for two years and allegedly stole trade secrets on chips used in high-volume data centers, the U.S. Attorney's office said. The chips were stored in nonpublic document repositories restricted to Broadcom employees. Ten days after leaving the San Jose, California-based company, Kim started working for a China-based startup focusing on chip design and the market for networking chips, the indictment said. Kim allegedly used the Broadcom trade secrets on a newly issued company laptop. Kim is charged with 18 counts of trade secret theft and faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release for each count.

Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with the top stories for Nov. 1-5 in case you missed them. You can find any article by searching the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

Taiwan logged more than $40 billion in exports in a month for the first time, capitalizing on surging demand for semiconductors and metals, data from the Ministry of Finance showed, Bloomberg reported Nov. 8. In October, overseas shipments jumped 24.6% year on year, while imports rose 37.2% to $34 billion, narrowing the trade balance to $6.1 billion. The finance ministry pegged strong demand for new technologies, the start of the peak holiday buying season and boosted raw material prices as the main factors behind the export surge, Bloomberg said. The ministry predicts momentum will continue through the end of the year.

Bernd Lange, chair of the European Union parliament's committee on trade, said that though it may be tricky to do so -- given that the EU and other countries have different ways of encouraging cleaner industry -- the EU's proposed carbon border adjustment measure should not be a way to just hike tariffs. "We have to avoid trade wars," he said to reporters in Washington Nov. 4. He said if another country does not have a cap and trade system and doesn't have a price on carbon, that doesn't mean they don't have climate change measures. "So we need to find equivalencies," he said.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. began another national security investigation into Beijing’s Wise Road Capital's proposed acquisition of South Korea's Magnachip Semiconductor Corporation after the companies were granted a request to refile with the committee in September (see 2109160037). CFIUS’s new investigation period began in late October and is expected to be completed by Dec. 13, Magnachip said in an Oct. 29 Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The U.S. was expected to reject the transaction before Magnachip requested to refile. CFIUS’s intervention in the deal, which wasn’t voluntarily notified to the committee, could set a new precedent for investment reviews and lead to more extraterritorial screening by U.S. trading partners (see 2110140035).

New draft text of Congress’ Build Back Better Act budget reconciliation bill includes a tax credit to incentivize advanced semiconductor manufacturing, which would help “strengthen” U.S. supply chains, the Semiconductor Industry Association said Oct. 28. The incentive, included in the reconciliation package released by congressional Democrats Oct. 28, would create an investment tax credit of up to 25% for certain “advanced manufacturing facilities” and a tax credit for certain “eligible components.” The credit would specifically be available for “property for the manufacturing of semiconductors and semiconductor tooling equipment” that begins construction before 2027. The package hasn’t yet received a vote.

The U.S. should continue to impose export controls on advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment and machinery but be careful about restricting sales of finished semiconductor products to China, Chinese economics and technology policy experts said. Controls on finished products may risk hurting U.S. semiconductor exporters and would not stop China from importing those goods elsewhere, they said.

Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with the top stories for Oct. 18-22 in case you missed them. You can find any article by searching the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.