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The Home of Representatives’ China committee has requested the chief executives of US chipmakers to testify earlier than Congress, because the panel intensifies its scrutiny of firms with pursuits in China.
The committee this week despatched letters to Intel, Nvidia and Micron summoning their chief executives to testify, in line with a number of folks aware of the state of affairs.
The transfer is a shift by the panel, which has not held hearings with CEOs from any trade because it was created to accentuate Congress’s deal with threats from China.
Emily Kilcrease, a commerce and sanctions professional on the CNAS think-tank, stated the committee was “utilizing its bully pulpit to show up the political strain on firms with important operations or gross sales in China”.
Folks aware of the state of affairs stated the bipartisan committee had turn into more and more eager on having the chipmakers testify after the CEOs of Intel, Nvidia and Qualcomm final yr lobbied Joe Biden’s administration because it was making ready to toughen semiconductor-related export controls.
Intel, Nvidia and Micron all declined to touch upon the letters, which have been despatched on Thursday.
“This listening to is a continuation of the committee’s oversight work on semiconductor firms and their ties to China, and particularly Intel, Nvidia and Qualcomm since they got here to Washington and actively tried to stop extra semiconductor controls final summer season,” stated one individual aware of the choice to ship the letters.
Intel chief govt Pat Gelsinger and his two trade friends, Jensen Huang of Nvidia and Qualcomm’s Christiano Amon, visited the White Home in July final yr in an effort to persuade officers that their plan to tighten restrictions on the export of cutting-edge semiconductors would trigger long-term injury to the US trade. All three chipmakers get hold of a good portion of their annual revenues from gross sales to China.
Huang instructed the Monetary Instances final yr that the US-China chip warfare would create “monumental” hurt to the US know-how trade. The semiconductor export controls had left Nvidia with “our fingers tied behind our again”.
The US commerce division in October imposed new restrictions on the export of chips for synthetic intelligence to China, closing a loophole that Nvidia had exploited after the primary set of export controls in October 2022. The transfer got here simply weeks earlier than President Biden met his Chinese language counterpart Xi Jinping in San Francisco.
Micron has not come underneath the identical type of scrutiny from US lawmakers, primarily as a result of the Idaho-based chipmaker doesn’t produce the identical type of cutting-edge semiconductors as Intel and Nvidia which have potential navy functions which have raised issues in Washington.
However the lawmakers wish to hear concerning the issues Micron has confronted working in China. The Chinese language authorities final yr banned some home teams from shopping for Micron chips, in a transfer broadly seen within the US as retaliation for the Biden administration’s efforts to cease China from getting cutting-edge American know-how.
In current months, Mike Gallagher, the Republican chair, and his panel have stepped up scrutiny of US firms with investments or operations in China, together with BlackRock, the world’s largest asset supervisor. The committee has additionally met privately with different CEOs together with Apple’sTim Cook dinner, and prime executives from Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Wall Avenue.
The choice to ask CEOs to testify will make US teams with pursuits in China more and more nervous about coming underneath the congressional highlight, notably as China is anticipated to be a spotlight within the 2024 presidential election.
“After specializing in non-public fairness and traders in China, these letters present that the committee is equally decided to push for decoupling of tech provide chains by turning up the warmth on a few of American’s greatest and most important chip firms,” Kilcrease stated.