US tightens rules for Samsung, Intel, SK Hynix chip production in China
Chipmakers now must obtain licences to buy equipment for China, affecting sales and potentially aiding Chinese manufacturers
The Trump administration on Friday revoked waivers that let Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix use American technology in their Chinese factories, a move that tightened controls on Beijing’s access to advanced chips while putting South Korea’s two largest chipmakers under fresh political and commercial pressure.
The change, recorded in the Federal Register, meant the companies would need to seek licences each time they bought American chipmaking equipment for their plants in Xi’an and Wuxi. Intel also appeared in the filing, though it had completed the sale of its Dalian unit earlier this year.
In a statement, the Commerce Department said it was closing a Biden-era loophole that let select foreign chipmakers operate in China without licences, and that future approvals would “allow former participants to operate their existing fabs in China” but not to expand or upgrade them.
The waivers had been introduced under the Biden administration in 2022, when Washington imposed sweeping export controls to block China from acquiring technology needed for high-end chips used in artificial intelligence and defence.
Samsung, SK Hynix and Taiwan’s TSMC were granted exemptions so that production in their Chinese facilities could continue without immediate disruption.
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Those carve-outs helped steady global supply chains, since the South Korean factories alone supplied more than a third of the world’s NAND flash memory, used in smartphones and laptops, and about 40 per cent of DRAM, the memory chips essential for servers and personal computers.