US President Donald Trump’s administration is weighing export restrictions against China that would bar the purchase of a wide swath of critical software, a White House official said on Wednesday on condition of anonymity.
Reuters earlier reported that the US was weighing efforts similar to the curbs implemented against Russia following the invasion of Ukraine if China did not backtrack from its threat to restrict rare earth exports.
Asked about limits on software exports to China, US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said that “everything is on the table.”
Photo: Reuters
“If these export controls, whether it’s software, engines or other things happen, it will likely be in coordination with our G7 allies,” Bessent said.
The Reuters report did not detail specific curbs or a definitive timeline for the new measures to be announced, but the US implemented export controls on enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management and computer-aided design software against Russia over the past few years.
Beijing and Washington have adopted a pattern of floating trade measures ahead of negotiations, providing leverage and bargaining chips for talks aimed at reducing barriers between the world’s largest economies.
Earlier this month, Trump said he would impose an additional 100 percent tariff on China as well as export controls on “any and all critical software” beginning at the start of next month.
The US has said that the move is in retaliation for China’s announced restrictions on the flow of critical rare earth minerals needed to make consumer products including motors, semiconductors and fighter jets, as well as new port fees on US ships.
Trump also threatened more retaliation earlier this week against Beijing if the two sides were unable to broker a deal.
However, he also said that talks planned for next week with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) would produce a “good deal” on trade.
Trump said he expected to have a “pretty long meeting” with Xi and to “work out a lot of our questions and our doubts and our tremendous assets together.”
“I think something will work out. We have a very good relationship, but that’ll be a big one,” he added.
Bloomberg Economics geoeconomics technology analyst Michael Deng said that the software restrictions would be possible under export control rules, but would be difficult to execute, given that the government department that would carry them out, the US Bureau of Industry and Security, has limited capacity and already strained licensing system.
A ban on “critical software” would mean greater risk for the sales in China of Cadence Design Systems Inc, Dassault Systemes SA and Synopsys Inc, Bloomberg Intelligence senior tech industry analyst Niraj Patel said.
Other areas that could be labeled as critical include Nvidia Corp’s CUDA toolkits, OpenAI’s artificial intelligence platforms, Arm Holdings PLC’s firmware tools and Qualcomm Inc’s telecom, as well as cryptography or encryption software by NXP Semiconductors NV and Palo Alto Networks Inc, Patel said.
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