The US Department of Commerce on Thursday said it would launch a survey of the US semiconductor supply chain and national defense industrial base to address national security concerns from Chinese-sourced chips.
The survey aims to identify how US companies are sourcing so-called legacy chips — current-generation and mature-node semiconductors — as the department moves to award nearly US$40 billion in subsidies for semiconductor chip manufacturing.
The department said the survey, which would begin next month, aims to “reduce national security risks posed by” China and would focus on the use and sourcing of Chinese-manufactured legacy chips in the supply chains of critical US industries.
Photo: Reuters
A report released by the department on Thursday said Beijing has provided the Chinese semiconductor industry with an estimated US$150 billion in subsidies in the past decade, creating “an unlevel global playing field for US and other foreign competitors.”
“Over the last few years, we’ve seen potential signs of concerning practices from [China] to expand their firms’ legacy chip production and make it harder for US companies to compete,” US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said.
China’s embassy in Washington said that the US “has been stretching the concept of national security, abusing export control measures, engaging in discriminatory and unfair treatment against enterprises of other countries, and politicizing and weaponizing economic and sci-tech issues.”
Raimondo last week said that she expects her department to make about a dozen semiconductor chip funding awards within the next year, including multibillion-dollar announcements that could drastically reshape US chip production.
Her department made the first award from the program on Monday last week.
The survey would also help promote a level playing field for legacy chip production, the department said.
“Addressing non-market actions by foreign governments that threaten the US legacy chip supply chain is a matter of national security,” Raimondo added.
US-headquartered companies account for about half of global semiconductor revenue, but face intense competition supported by foreign subsidies, the department said.
Its report said the cost of manufacturing semiconductors in the US might be “30 to 45 percent higher than the rest of the world” and it called for long-term support for domestic fabrication construction.
The US should enact “permanent provisions that incentivize steady construction and modernization of semiconductor fab facilities, such as the investment tax credit scheduled to end in 2027,” the report added.
Semiconductor business between Taiwan and the US is a “win-win” model for both sides given the high level of complementarity, the government said yesterday responding to tariff threats from US President Donald Trump. Home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), Taiwan is a key link in the global technology supply chain for companies such as Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp. Trump said on Monday he plans to impose tariffs on imported chips, pharmaceuticals and steel in an effort to get the producers to make them in the US. “Taiwan and the US semiconductor and other technology industries
SMALL AND EFFICIENT: The Chinese AI app’s initial success has spurred worries in the US that its tech giants’ massive AI spending needs re-evaluation, a market strategist said Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek’s (深度求索) eponymous AI assistant rocketed to the top of Apple Inc’s iPhone download charts, stirring doubts in Silicon Valley about the strength of the US’ technological dominance. The app’s underlying AI model is widely seen as competitive with OpenAI and Meta Platforms Inc’s latest. Its claim that it cost much less to train and develop triggered share moves across Asia’s supply chain. Chinese tech firms linked to DeepSeek, such as Iflytek Co (科大訊飛), surged yesterday, while chipmaking tool makers like Advantest Corp slumped on the potential threat to demand for Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators. US stock
SUBSIDIES: The nominee for commerce secretary indicated the Trump administration wants to put its stamp on the plan, but not unravel it entirely US President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the agency in charge of a US$52 billion semiconductor subsidy program declined to give it unqualified support, raising questions about the disbursement of funds to companies like Intel Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電). “I can’t say that I can honor something I haven’t read,” Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, said of the binding CHIPS and Science Act awards in a confirmation hearing on Wednesday. “To the extent monies have been disbursed, I would commit to rigorously enforcing documents that have been signed by those companies to make sure we get
UNUSUAL TIMING: The success of DeepSeek has prompted a scramble among its domestic competitors to upgrade their own AI models Chinese technology company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) yesterday released a new version of its Qwen 2.5 artificial intelligence (AI) model that it said surpassed the highly acclaimed DeepSeek-V3. The unusual timing of the Qwen 2.5-Max’s release, on the first day of the Lunar New Year when most Chinese people are off work and with their families, points to the pressure Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek’s (深度求索) meteoric rise in the past three weeks has placed on not just overseas rivals, but also its domestic competition. “Qwen 2.5-Max outperforms ... almost across the board GPT-4o, DeepSeek-V3 and Llama-3.1-405B,” Alibaba’s cloud unit said in
RSS