US officials call for tougher chip rules to limit China’s gains
Lawmakers seek stronger BIS powers and more staff, saying Beijing could use one-year pause in export controls to advance domestic abilities
Washington should tighten its export controls by adding inspection staff and plugging loopholes to slow Beijing’s chipmaking advances and curb evasion efforts with support from allies such as the Netherlands and Japan, US lawmakers and experts said on Thursday.
Such actions should be deployed, including empowering the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) to close trade loopholes and also targeting China’s national champion firms in the semiconductor sector as well as their US subsidiaries, according to a public hearing organised by the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Members of the committee argued that such a truce could give Beijing time to have workarounds and eventually challenge Washington’s leadership in high-end chips and AI, two core areas of bilateral tech rivalry.
“Pausing the 50 per cent affiliates ruling gives Chinese entities a year to create workarounds,” she said at the hearing titled Export Control Loopholes: Chipmaking Tools and Their Subcomponents.