Trump's decision removes world division, but announces new restrictions

• US withdraws chip export restrictions – Trump administration reverses Biden’s decision. It’s about the interests of American companies like Nvidia.
• The changes are a response to China's rapid development of advanced chip production capabilities. The US administration wants to curb their spread.
• Individual chip negotiations with countries will depend on whether they use Huawei's advanced components.

Two days before the world's "silicon curtain" was to fall, the Donald Trump administration reversed a decision restricting semiconductor exports to over 100 countries.

- We reject the Biden administration's attempt to impose its own ill-conceived and counterproductive AI policies on the American people, said Jeffrey Kessler, deputy head of the Commerce Department.

In an official letter, the administration cited two reasons for the decision. First, the competitiveness of American companies. This mainly concerns the role of Nvidia. It is the largest American exporter of chips. As we wrote in the CIS , its authorities strongly lobbied the American administration to lift the restrictions. In Europe, they would threaten, for example, building AI factories based on them, in the Middle East they could harm trade agreements.

The Trump administration is currently negotiating large chip deliveries to Emirati AI flagship G42. On the other hand, it is keen on mineral extraction contracts.

Secondly, the communiqué also emphasised the importance of relations with allies.

These new requirements would stifle American innovation and burden companies with burdensome new regulatory requirements. (...) They would also undermine U.S. diplomatic relations with dozens of countries, relegating them to second-class status.

This is an issue raised in talks with the Americans, among others, by the Polish side - both the government and the president sought it. Andrzej Duda already in February assured that "this matter has been resolved".

Individual negotiations - a game to break up the unity of the European Union

Is the change regarding advanced chips a clear positive signal for Poland? Not necessarily. Bilateral agreements on semiconductors may be influenced by investment promises or other trade and diplomatic considerations. For example , the issue of digital tax, which was also recently commented on by US administration officials .

They pointed out that the tax is detrimental to the interests of American companies, and cited Poland as a good example, which has not yet introduced it. The problem is that Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski intends to fight for its establishment .

- The US is playing to break up the unity of the EU. Negotiations at the level of nation states will not serve to build unity within the EU, and the EU itself would be too solid a monolith in negotiations - argues Gosia Fraser, author of the Techspresso.cafe podcast and an expert in the field of new technologies. In her opinion, this will only intensify the effect that the European Commission protested after the publication of reports on the division of the world into computational categories.

The US-China tech rivalry is heating up

The countries to which advanced chips are exported will also be affected by whether they use Huawei-made components. The Commerce Department made clear in a statement that it plans to issue additional guidance that says using Huawei Ascend chips anywhere in the world violates U.S. export control laws. It also plans to issue guidance for U.S. companies on how to protect their supply chains from attempts to seize or exploit them.

The department also announced public warnings about "potential national security risks resulting from the use of U.S. AI chips to train and operate Chinese AI models."

This is a result of the Sino-American rivalry in artificial intelligence. The United States is increasingly concerned about the speed at which Huawei is developing advanced chips.

The hypothesis of the US administration, described by the Financial Times, is that the Huawei Ascend chips - 910B, 910C and 910D - are likely to have been "designed using specific software or technology from the US or manufactured using semiconductor manufacturing equipment that is a direct product of specific software or technology from the US."