UNITED STATES: According to a Washington official, the US, Japan, and the Netherlands have reached an agreement to impose new bans on the export of chipmaking tools to China. According to sources, the agreement has been panned out and confirmed.
In October, the United States implemented a hard export ban on the export of chipmaking tools to China to cripple Beijing’s potential to flower its chip industry, which would, in turn, strengthen its military capabilities.
According to Washington’s requests, the board included representatives from the Netherlands and Japan’s major chipmakers, ASML and Tokyo Electron. The commercial section mentioned in the email that it would not stop exports to foreign allies, considering them a “priority.”
Varied topics were discussed by the officials from the Netherlands and Japan in Washington, which was conducted by Jake Sullivan, the White House’s national security advisor, on Friday.
On being asked about the possibility of an agreement being made on semiconductors, US President Joe Biden said on Friday: “Yes, we talked about a lot of things, but a lot of it is private.”
US export industries have particularly targeted China’s semiconductor industries by imposing export restrictions. Despite Beijing’s investments in cultivating its domestic industry, China’s fabrication plants, known as “fabs,” rely on foreign-made tools.
China’s largest fab, SMIC, creates chips mainly catering to the automobile sector, internet-of-things devices, and certain smartphones. SMIC was incorporated in the Entity List in 2020 by the US, which stopped the Dutch firm ASML from equipping SMIC with high-UV lithography machines.
Certain firms have long influenced the ultra-competitive sector from the US and South Korea; YMTC is the only active firm in the global Nand memory market. It was added to the US Entity List in 2022.
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