US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Huawei Technologies Co.’s latest phone. shows that China is lagging behind in advanced chip manufacturing technology.
In an interview with CBS News 60 minutes Raimondo downplayed the company’s claims of a breakthrough and said the technology gap shows the Biden administration’s success in imposing export controls on China.
During Raimondo’s visit to China in August, Shenzhen-based Huawei unveiled a smartphone equipped with a domestically advanced 7-nanometer chip – technology that is generations ahead of where the US had hoped to stop China’s advance.
“This is years behind what we have in the United States,” Raimondo said in an interview that aired Sunday. “We have the most complex semiconductors in the world. China doesn’t do this. We have surpassed China in innovation.”
Raimondo vowed to take over “the strongest possible” measures to protect US national security, and Commerce Undersecretary Alan Estevez said Huawei’s chip partner Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. “potentially” violated US law. Biden Administration I’m considering blacklisting Chinese companies, they suspect, may produce chips for Huawei.
The global chip race intensified after Russia invaded Ukraine as the United States and its allies tightened semiconductor export controls to Moscow. Raimondo said the restrictions are effective, citing reports that the Russians are taking semiconductors “out of refrigerators and dishwashers” for use in military equipment.
“It is absolutely true that our export controls have harmed their ability to fight a war, made it more difficult,” Raimondo said.
Raimondo’s department – once famous for its secretary who struggled don’t sleep on the job — has taken a key role in the Biden administration’s China strategy, including efforts to prevent cutting-edge technologies from falling into Chinese hands.
After the Netherlands and Japan joined in some restrictions last year and U.S. rules tightened in the fall, Raimondo is pressuring those two countries, as well as South Korea and Germany, to further restrict China’s access to foreign technology.
Her department is also responsible for issuing more than $100 billion in grants and loans to boost domestic semiconductor production, as well as recruiting allies to curb China’s own chipmaking and artificial intelligence ambitions.
Raimondo has spent recent weeks unveiling multibillion-dollar awards under the 2022 Chip and Science Act for Intel, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung Electronics Co., and is set to announce another award for Micron Technology Inc. this week. Federal funding has spurred more than $200 billion in private investment in the semiconductor industry since President Joe Biden took office, and more than 600 firms have expressed interest in the grants, which are nearly 85% committed.