The US House of Representative’s Committee on China has called for trade restrictions to be placed on Chinese memory chip manufacturer Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT). This follows the Chinese government’s ban on the use of some Micron chips in certain sectors, citing concerns that the products pose a significant security risk to the country’s key information infrastructure supply chain. However, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has stated that these claims are “not based in fact” and that the Department of Commerce is engaged directly with the People’s Republic of China to detail the administration’s views on the ban.
Micron, a US memory chip giant, produces computer memory and computer data storage including dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), flash memory, and USB flash drives. Recently, the company has announced it would be investing $3.6 billion to bring extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) to Japan. Micron has also pledged to spend $20 billion to build what it called the largest-ever US semiconductor factory in Onondaga County, New York, and the company has also broken ground on a memory manufacturing fab near its headquarters in Boise, Idaho.
CXMT is China’s leading maker of DRAM memory chips and would be the Chinese company most likely to benefit from a ban on Micron products. Republican Mike Gallagher, chairman of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, has said that “The United States must make clear to the PRC that it will not tolerate economic coercion against its companies or its allies.” Gallagher has called for the Commerce Department to immediately add ChangXin Memory Technologies to the entity list and ensure no US technology, regardless of specifications, goes to CXMT, Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp (YMTC), or other PRC firms operating in this industry. He has also called for the Department of Commerce to ensure that no US-export licenses granted to foreign semiconductor memory firms operating in the PRC are used to backfill Micron.
This week’s action represents the latest dispute in the ongoing trade war that has seen the US presidential administrations of Joe Biden and Donald Trump ban the use of Chinese-made hardware in US networks and impose export controls to keep the latest computing technology out of China’s hands. In October 2022, export controls were issued by Biden’s administration to block US companies from selling advanced semiconductors and equipment to certain Chinese manufacturers without special license. Further restrictions were then rolled out in December of…
2023-06-02 02:00:03
Article from www.networkworld.com