USA: Anyone who uses Huawei chips must count on consequences

Despite the latest approach between the USA and China, the export regulations for high technology have now been tightened in Washington. Huawei is targeting again – and the users of its products all over the world.

Prevent mass market

According to a now published announcement by the US Ministry of Trade, the use of Huawei’s ASCEND-KI chips worldwide violates applicable US export rules. So if you buy such chips in China and use it in your own data center, you can get problems if business with US companies is to be done.

This is reported by the US news agency Bloomberg. For Huawei, the new measure means a further setback on the way to developing more powerful chips for smartphones and AI applications. The company had recently tried to keep China’s answer to the dominant graphics accelerators from Nvidia – connection to international standards with its Ascend processors.

Huawei’s US sanctions had previously prevented them from accessing the most advanced manufacturing systems. The provisions that have now been announced ensure that the chips are primarily more expensive, since the effects of mass production use the price of individual chips less if the paragraph is made more difficult.

More freedom for third parties

In parallel to the new interpretation of the export rules, the Ministry of Commerce announced that it would revoke certain regulations from the era of President Joe Biden. These had severely restricted the export of semiconductors to the development of AI applications, but had come across violent criticism of US allies and companies such as Nvidia and Oracle.

According to the ministry, the regulations would have damaged the trust of numerous partner countries. Instead, the government under Donald Trump is currently working on a realignment of export policy. The aim is a “brave, including strategy”, in which individual agreements with trustworthy countries are to be made in order to protect American technologies – without excluding them completely from global trade. However, China should be excluded in a targeted manner.