House China panel urges tougher restrictions on chip toolmakers

The House Select Committee on China is calling for stronger restrictions on companies producing the equipment used to make semidconductor chips amid concerns their sales are boosting Beijing’s chipmaking capabilities.
In a new report Tuesday, the panel said Chinese firms spent $38 billion on semiconductor manufacturing equipment from five major companies based in the U.S. and allied countries — ASML, Tokyo Electron, Applied Materials, KLA and Lam Research — last year.
“They are growing their profits at the expense of U.S. national security,” House China Committee Chair John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) said in a statement. “We must not allow this critical equipment to be handed over to our foremost adversary, or America could lose the technology arms race.”
The panel’s report called for “dramatically” expanding country-wide bans and licensing requirements on the chipmaking tools, suggesting that entity-based export controls have fallen short.
The lawmakers also argued for greater alignment between the U.S. and its allies on export controls. The report found that non-U.S. toolmakers, like ASML and Tokyo Electron, were less constrained than their American peers.
If necessary, the report suggested the U.S. expand its use of the foreign direct product rule, which extends export controls to certain foreign-made products that rely on U.S. technology, to block sales in allied countries.
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