US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo had a sobering message for US makers of chipmaking equipment this week: You will need to wait as long as nine months before Washington can reach an accord with US allies over strict new rules aimed at restricting China’s access to certain technologies.
The US is working on an agreement that would make companies in the Netherlands and Japan — home to some of the biggest makers of chipmaking gear — subject to limits on sales of such equipment to China.
US companies are already bound by the export controls, which they say would cost them billions of US dollars in revenue even as their main competitors in Europe and Japan face fewer limits on China sales.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
Reaching the accord, aimed at leveling the playing field, could take six to nine months, Raimondo told representatives of the US companies, according to people with direct knowledge of the meeting.
Washington announced a new round of export control rules on Oct. 7 to limit China’s access to advanced chips and semiconductor-manufacturing equipment made with US technologies.
Raimondo made the comments when she met on Wednesday with representatives from equipment makers, including Lam Research Corp and KLA Corp, said the people, who requested anonymity discussing a non-public interchange.
US DOMINANCE
The global chip-production equipment market is dominated by US companies Lam, KLA and Applied Materials Inc, as well as ASML Holding NV in the Netherlands and Japan’s Tokyo Electron Ltd.
Currently, the non-US suppliers have more latitude in doing business with China.
For the US triumvirate, restrictions on what their overseas competitors can ship to China cannot come fast enough.
Applied Materials, Lam and KLA have told investors that the new export control measures would cut into their revenue. The risk for them is that — until the restrictions apply in a more even-handed way — foreign peers would win market share in China, generating added revenue that in turn can be plowed into developing new products.
While the overall market for chipmaking gear is forecast to shrink next year, analysts project that the three US companies would suffer steeper revenue declines than their Japanese counterpart.
PRESSURING ALLIES
Washington is now preparing to amp up pressure on allies to block chip gear sales to China. Senior US National Security Council official Tarun Chhabra and Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Alan Estevez are scheduled to travel to the Netherlands for discussions on China-chip curbs later this month, Bloomberg News has reported, although no deal is expected to come out of the talks.
Estevez last week said that he expects a deal with allies to be reached in the near term.
He said he wants rules for US companies to be “fair with their competition across the globe, and it’s fair for their competition with each other.”
He added that he and other officials, such as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Raimondo, are talking to allies about the issue.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last