President Joe Biden will discuss cooperation on limiting China’s access to semiconductor technology in back-to-back visits to Washington by leaders of Japan and the Netherlands in the coming days.
(Bloomberg) — President Joe Biden will discuss cooperation on limiting China’s access to semiconductor technology in back-to-back visits to Washington by leaders of Japan and the Netherlands in the coming days.
The topic will be part of broader security discussions Biden will hold with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Friday, followed by his Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte on Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the situation, who asked not to be identified discussing internal plans.
Japan and the Netherlands agreed in principle to mirror some of the strict export limits imposed by the Biden administration, Bloomberg News reported last month. However, no announcement on any tech agreement will come during the visits, the person said.
Washington in October announced restrictions on the export of key technology to China aimed at debilitating its efforts to develop its own semiconductor supply chain, part of the broader US efforts to manage China’s strategic competition.
There are five key companies that make the equipment necessary to produce advanced semiconductors, including Applied Materials Inc., KLA Corp. and Lam Research Corp., which were covered directly by the Biden administration restrictions because they’re American firms. The other major players are the Netherlands’ ASML Holding NV and Japan’s Tokyo Electron Ltd.
That makes cooperation from Tokyo and The Hague critical to the Biden administration’s efforts to limit China’s development of its own domestic semiconductor capabilities. A full three-country alliance would create a near-total blockade of China’s access to the equipment necessary to make leading-edge chips.
China has filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization over the US export controls. Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a regular news briefing Friday in Beijing that China would follow the developments closely and safeguard its interests.
“The US, in order to perpetuate its hegemony and selfish interests, has abused export controls, politicized, instrumentalized and weaponized technological and economic issues, exerted economic coercion on its allies, maliciously blocked and hobbled Chinese businesses and deliberately promoted decoupling and the breaking of industrial chains,” Wang told reporters. “This has gravely undermined market rules and the international order.”
There isn’t an expectation from the parties involved that any arrangement on the tech restrictions would be announced together, people familiar with the matter said.
John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said Thursday that Biden and Rutte will discuss support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion and “cooperation going forward on critical technologies.”
–With assistance from Peter Elstrom and Lucille Liu.
(Updates with chip sector details in fifth paragraph.)
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