US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the latest phone from Huawei Technologies Co. shows that China is lagging behind in advanced chip technology.
In an interview with CBS News’ 60 minutes, Raimondo downplayed the company’s claims of a breakthrough, saying the technology gap shows the Biden administration’s success in imposing export controls on China.
While Raimondo was visiting China in August, Shenzhen-based Huawei unveiled a smartphone powered by an advanced homegrown 7-nanometer chip, a technology generations ahead of how the US hoped to halt China’s progress to call.
“It’s years behind what we have in the United States,” Raimondo said in the interview that aired Sunday. “We have the most advanced semiconductors in the world. Not China. We have outsmarted China.”
Raimondo has vowed to achieve victory “strongest possible” action to protect U.S. national security, and Secretary of Commerce Alan Estevez has said that Huawei’s chip manufacturing partner Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. “potential” violate US law. The Biden administration does considering a blacklist It is suspected that Chinese companies could make chips for Huawei.
The global chip race intensified after Russia invaded Ukraine, when the US and its allies stepped up export controls on semiconductors to Moscow. Raimondo said the curbs were effective, citing reports that Russians were taking semiconductors “out of refrigerators and out of dishwashers” for use in military equipment.
“It is absolutely true that our export controls have harmed their ability to fight the war and made it more difficult,” Raimondo said.
Raimondo’s department – once known for a secretary who had trouble with it staying awake at work – has taken on a central role in the Biden administration’s China strategy, including efforts to keep cutting-edge technology out of Chinese hands.
After getting the Netherlands and Japan on board with some of the restrictions last year, and then tightening U.S. rules in the fall, Raimondo is pressuring those two countries — plus South Korea and Germany — to restrict China’s access to further restrict foreign technology.
Her department is also responsible for providing grants and loans worth more than $100 billion to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing, while also rallying allies to rein in China’s own chipmaking and AI ambitions.
Raimondo in recent weeks unveiled multibillion-dollar awards from the 2022 Chips and Science Act for Intel Corp., Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung Electronics Co., and another will be announced this week for Micron Technology Inc. Federal funding has spurred more than $200 billion in private investment in semiconductors since President Joe Biden took office, and more than 600 companies have expressed interest in the grants, nearly 85% of which have been allocated.
