NY Times Quotes Akin Trade Partner Kevin Wolf on Export Controls and Semiconductors

For its article “‘An Act of War’: Inside America’s Silicon Blockade Against China,” The New York Times quoted Akin international trade partner Kevin Wolf. The article looks at the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, which monitors export transactions and issues licenses for export of certain goods, and the export controls document it issued in October 2022 that, in the Times’ words, amounted to a declaration of economic war against China by seeking to cripple its ability to purchase or produce semiconductors.

The article discusses the foreign direct product rule (FDPR), by which foreign-made items are subject to U.S. export controls if they were made using U.S. technology or software. FDPR was applied to a major Chinese telecommunications producer, Huawei, in May 2020, which meant, according to the Times, that it was virtually cut off from semiconductors. Said Kevin, who served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration at the BIS, “That rule subjected all semiconductors on the planet to American law, because every foundry on the planet uses U.S. tools at least in part. If you have one U.S. tool and 100 non-American tools in your fab, that taints any wafer moving across the line.”

Discussing the October U.S. export controls, which prevented China from importing advanced chips, acquiring the inputs to develop its own advanced semiconductors and supercomputers, and obtaining U.S. components, technology and software to produce semiconductor-manufacturing, Kevin said, “It was an ‘all of the above’ strategy.”