The President’s Government Joe Biden pressure is increasing on the China’s leading chip makerwhich already faces sanctions, with a restriction on imports from the United States of its most advanced factory, after it designed a sophisticated chip for Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro phonesaid three people familiar with the matter.
Late last year, the Commerce Department sent dozens of letters to U.S. suppliers of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC)suspending permission to sell to its most advanced plant, said two people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Although many companies had already stopped selling to SMIC South, as the unit is known, the letters halted shipments of millions of dollars worth of chipmaking materials and parts from at least one supplier, Entegris, one of them said. people.
Reuters found no evidence that Entegris had violated any US laws or regulations.
Entegris said it made the shipments pursuant to a valid export license and stopped them after receiving letters from the Department of Commerce, which suspended permission to ship products to SMIC South.
The Massachusetts company, which makes filters, gases, chemicals and wafer handling products, the building blocks for chip manufacturing, said it monitors and complies with “rapidly evolving regulatory requirements” for international trade that affect the chip industry.
SMIC did not respond to a request for comment. Huawei, the White House and the Commerce Department declined to comment.
“This is blatant economic bullying and will inevitably backfire,” said a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington. “We urge the US side to stop exaggerating the concept of national security and abusing state power to suppress Chinese companies.”
The license suspensions by the Commerce Department, first reported by Reuters, show that the Biden administration has taken action against SMIC amid growing pressure from Republicans on China to stem the flow of American technology to the company and degrade its ability to manufacture sophisticated semiconductors.
That pressure has increased since August, when sanctioned Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei surprised the world with a new phone equipped with a sophisticated chip. The Huawei Mate 60 Pro was seen as a symbol of China’s technological resurgence despite Washington’s continued efforts to cripple its ability to produce advanced semiconductors.
The phone also prompted a review by the Biden administration into the details behind the chip that powers it, the most advanced semiconductor China has yet made.
By Alexandra Alper and Karen Freifeld, Reuters agency
Source: Ambito
