TSMC, Samsung seeking permanent US licenses to operate China chip plants

Enlarge / Aerial photo taken at night shows the TSMC plant area in Nanjing, Jiangsu province. (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto)

The US Commerce Department announced today that key foreign chipmakers can continue receiving critical US chipmaking tools at China-based plants, Reuters reported.

This decision extends special authorizations that were granted to foreign chipmakers—including South Korea’s SK Hynix and Samsung, as well as the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC)—after the Biden administration curbed shipments of advanced chips and chipmaking equipment to China last October.

Those export controls were intended to slow down China’s rapid advancement of AI and military technologies, but the new rules also ended up negatively impacting US chip production. To overcome those inadvertent impacts on US chip supplies, the Biden administration granted limited special authorizations to allow some chipmakers to continue shipping equipment into China. Now, those chipmakers will be able to continue operating Chinese plants “without the headache of applying for US licenses,” Reuters reported.