Raimondo said the administration is meeting with companies “to get to the right place so we don’t damage American business but quite frankly protect American national security.”
Last year, China accounted for $180 billion in semiconductor purchases, close to a third of the worldwide total of $574.1 billion and the largest single market, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association. Nvidia, Qualcomm and Intel have crucial sales riding on China. Qualcomm is the only company with a license from U.S. regulators to sell mobile phone chips to Huawei.The Biden administration is considering updating a sweeping set of rules imposed in October to hobble China’s chip industry and a new executive order restricting some outbound investment.
“This isn’t about holding China back or denying them commodity technology,” Raimondo said. China wants access to the United States most sophisticated technology “to advance their military and we’re not going to allow that,” she said.