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(Reuters/Yonhap)

As the US Department of Commerce plans additional restrictions on exporting semiconductors to China, a semiconductor lobbying group in the US has publicly called for restraint. The statement represents an overt expression of American chipmakers’ grievances about the export controls, which keep them from selling semiconductors in the world’s biggest market.

“Recognizing that strong economic and national security require a strong US semiconductor industry, leaders in Washington took bold and historic action last year to enact the CHIPS and Science Act. [. . .] Allowing the industry to have continued access to the China market, the world’s largest commercial market for commodity semiconductors, is important to avoid undermining the positive impact of this effort,” the US Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) said in a statement posted to its website on Monday.

“Repeated steps, however, to impose overly broad, ambiguous, and at times unilateral restrictions risk diminishing the US semiconductor industry’s competitiveness, disrupting supply chains, causing significant market uncertainty, and prompting continued escalatory retaliation by China.”

The association went on to “urge the administration to refrain from further restrictions until it engages more extensively with industry and experts to assess the impact of current and potential restrictions to determine whether they are narrow and clearly defined, consistently applied, and fully coordinated with allies.”

It also called on both governments to “ease tensions and seek solutions through dialogue.”

SIA counts among its members such major American chipmakers as Intel, Qualcomm, Nvidia, Micron Technology and IBM. Korean chipmakers Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are also enrolled as international members.

It’s unusual for an organization that speaks for the interests of a major American industry to release a statement objecting to export controls against China. China makes up one-third of the global semiconductor market (which was valued at US$555.9 billion last year). These American chipmakers seem no longer willing to tolerate narrowing access to that massive market.

Last October, the US Department of Commerce banned exports to China of equipment for manufacturing dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) at 18 nanometers and below, NAND flash memory at 128 layers or more, and logic chips at 14 nanometers and below. It has also blocked exports of chips for supercomputers and artificial intelligence.

The US Department of Commerce is reportedly planning to soon extend its restrictions to AI chips at lower specifications. Reports indicate that the department is also trying to block American companies from providing cloud computing services to China to impede its development of AI.

Imposing those additional export controls would likely be a blow for Nvidia and other exporters of low-spec AI chips.

The leaders of Intel, Qualcomm and Nvidia met with a group of senior Biden administration officials (national security advisor Jake Sullivan, National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo) on Monday to communicate the industry’s opinions.

“Our actions have been carefully [. . .] designed to ensure that US and allied technologies are not used to undermine our national security,” Reuters quoted a White House National Security Council spokesperson as saying.

By Lee Bon-young, Washington correspondent

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