Aug 1, 2022
U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration is considering limiting shipments of American chipmaking equipment to memory chip makers in China.
If President Joe Biden’s administration proceeds with the move, it could also hurt South Korean memory chip juggernauts Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS) and SK Hynix Inc (000660.KS), the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Samsung has two big factories in China while SK Hynix Inc is buying Intel Corp’s (INTC.O) NAND flash memory chips manufacturing business in China.
It would mark the first U.S. bid through export controls to target Chinese production of memory chips without specialized military applications, representing a more expansive view of American national security, according to export control experts.
The move would also seek to protect the only U.S. memory chip producers, Western Digital Corp (WDC.O) and Micron Technology Inc (MU.O), representing about a quarter of the NAND chips market.
NAND chips store data in devices such as smartphones and personal computers and at data centers like Amazon, Facebook, and Google. How many gigabytes of data a phone or laptop can hold is determined by how many NAND chips it includes and how advanced they are.
All the sources described the administration’s consideration of the matter as in the early stages, with no proposed regulations yet drafted.
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