U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Huawei Technologies Co.’s latest phone shows China is lagging behind in the most recent chip technology.
In an interview with CBS News 60 minutes, Raimondo downplayed the corporate’s claims of a breakthrough, saying the technology gap shows the Biden administration’s success in imposing export controls on China.
While Raimondo was visiting China in August, Shenzhen-based Huawei unveiled a smartphone equipped with a self-developed advanced 7-nanometer chip, a technology much like the one the U.S. hoped would halt China’s advances by generations is ahead.
“It’s years behind what we have in the United States,” Raimondo said within the interview broadcast Sunday. “We have the most advanced semiconductors in the world. Not China. We have outdone China in terms of innovation.”
Raimondo has vowed to take over “strongest possible” U.S. national security measures and Commerce Secretary Alan Estevez said Huawei’s chipmaking partner Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. “potentially” violate US law. The Biden administration is Consider blacklisting Chinese firms suspect they may make chips for Huawei.
The global chip race intensified after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, because the United States and its allies tightened export controls on semiconductors to Moscow. Raimondo said the restrictions were effective, pointing to reports that the Russians were taking semiconductors “out of refrigerators, out of dishwashers” to be used in military equipment.
“It is absolutely true that our export controls have impaired their ability to fight the war and made it more difficult,” Raimondo said.
Raimondo’s department – once known for a struggling secretary Stay awake at work — has taken a central role within the Biden administration’s China strategy, including efforts to maintain essentially the most advanced technology out of China’s hands.
After bringing the Netherlands and Japan on board with a number of the restrictions last 12 months after which tightening U.S. rules in the autumn, Raimondo is putting pressure on those two countries, in addition to South Korea and Germany, to further restrict China’s access to foreign technology.
Her department can be chargeable for issuing greater than $100 billion in grants and loans to spice up domestic semiconductor production while enlisting allies to curb China’s own chipmaking and AI ambitions.
Raimondo has spent the previous couple of weeks announcing billion-dollar awards from the 2022 Chips and Science Act for Intel Corp., Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung Electronics Co., and can announce one other award for Micron Technology Inc. this week . Federal funding has spurred greater than $200 billion in private semiconductor investment since President Joe Biden took office, and greater than 600 firms have expressed interest within the grants, that are nearly 85% awarded.
