The Trump administration is moving to end Biden-era restrictions on how U.S. semiconductors are sold overseas.
Stock prices for major semiconductor designers and manufacturers jumped at reports that Washington could be ending some restrictions on sales of chips, though details remain scarce.
A Commerce Department spokesperson said that the Trump administration would rescind Biden-era rules that it views as overly complex and bureaucratic and replace them with more streamlined rules.
“The Biden AI rule is overly complex, overly bureaucratic, and would stymie American innovation. We will be replacing it with a much simpler rule that unleashes American innovation and ensures American AI dominance,” the spokesperson said.
No details as to the new rules or which old rules are to be replaced were immediately available.
Under current rules, U.S. companies and foreign firms manufacturing some U.S.-designed chips are prevented from doing business with certain designated entities, such as those associated with the Chinese military.
Most sales are not wholly banned, but require a special license from the U.S. government to prevent chips from being sold to entities that could pose a national security risk to the United States.
In 2022, the Biden administration added more advanced and high-performance chips and related commodities that contain such chips to the list of restricted items, claiming that such technologies could be used for both civilian and military purposes.
U.S. companies such as NVIDIA and AMD were at that time blocked from selling high-end AI chips to China and forced to create watered-down designs for the Chinese market.
In 2023, the Biden administration moved to close what it saw as loopholes in the previous list by further restricting some of the watered-down chips that companies had created for China and adding tighter controls on semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
Likewise, in 2024, the Biden administration began putting diplomatic pressure on its allies, compelling leaders in the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan to limit their exports of chip-making tools and technologies to China.
It’s unclear whether the Trump administration intends to rescind the Biden-era process for requiring export licenses for chips, decrease the number of chips on the restricted list, or both.
It is unlikely that the new restrictions will significantly improve China’s access to chips, however, given the Trump administration’s recent actions on the issue.
The administration is conducting a national security investigation into the electronics supply chain, including semiconductor manufacturing capabilities, and President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that new tariffs on chips would be forthcoming.
The news also comes just hours after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that U.S. and Chinese officials would begin negotiations on trade this weekend.
