President Joe Biden’s administration intends to put chipmaker Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) and another 35 Chinese companies on its trade “blacklist” worldwide.
According to sources heard by Bloomberg, the measure aims to combat China’s advance in the semiconductor market and is a way to block the purchase of machines or components developed in the US.
The US Commerce Department is expected to add Chinese companies to the “entity list” later this week. The final text is already ready and pending approval by the White House.
Adding a company to the entity list makes its US suppliers need a special license to ship components and parts to these Chinese manufacturers. In other cases, only low tech items can be exported🇧🇷
YMTC’s situation should match that of Huawei, which cannot sell smartphones with a 5G connection and still faces a series of limitations to market its smartphones. An example of this is that they cannot have the Google ecosystem.
For now, the Commerce Department has not commented on the matter. YMTC, on the other hand, declined to comment on what it still considers to be a rumour, but a commercial blockade against the manufacturer could trigger some retaliation from the Chinese government.
It should be remembered that Beijing must invest heavily to try to get rid of US dependence on the semiconductor market. The US, on the other hand, intends to completely block the shipment of machines that are used to produce chips, something that could happen in January 2023.
