U.S. likely to cap level of S.Korean chips made in China- U.S. official

SEOUL, Feb 24 (Reuters) – The United States will probably limit the degree of state-of-the-art semiconductors designed by South Korean organizations in China, a senior U.S. official claimed.

In Oct, South Korea’s Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) and SK Hynix (000660.KS), the world’s leading memory chip makers, gained an one-year reprieve from U.S. export restrictions aimed at thwarting Beijing’s technological ambitions and blocking its armed forces innovations. go through more go through additional

“What will very likely be is a cap on the levels that they can expand to in China,” mentioned Alan Estevez, the U.S. Commerce Department’s under secretary for market and protection, when requested what would materialize just after the waiver ended.

Estevez, who oversees constraints on tech exports to China, designed the opinions on Thursday all through a forum hosted by the Centre for Strategic and Worldwide Reports, a Washington-centered assume tank.

“If you are at whatsoever layer of NAND, we will stop it someplace in that range,” Estevez mentioned, referring to a flash memory item manufactured by Samsung and SK. He extra that the U.S. govt was in deep dialogue with the South Korean chipmakers.

“We perform with them to guarantee that we usually are not heading to hurt our allies’ corporations. At the same time, we’re heading to impede the Chinese functionality of creating capabilities that are heading to threaten us collectively,” he reported.

South Korea’s field ministry on Friday claimed there have been no certain discussions among South Korea and the United States on placing a cap on the engineering amount.

“The two South Korea and the United States have fashioned a consensus that latest operations and long term expenditure by South Korean chip makers ought to not be disrupted,” the business ministry explained in a assertion, including that the South Korean govt options to carefully explore the extension of chip-building equipment imports to China.

Samsung Electronics did not have comment. SK Hynix was not immediately readily available for comment.

Samsung and SK Hynix, which control about 50 {f5ac61d6de3ce41dbc84aacfdb352f5c66627c6ee4a1c88b0642321258bd5462} of the world wide NAND flash memory chip sector, have invested greatly in China in current many years to create chips that are vital to customers including tech giants Apple (AAPL.O), and Amazon (AMZN.O).

Previously, an American official acknowledged the existence of a deal with Japan and the Netherlands for these international locations to impose new limits on exports of chipmaking applications to China. read through additional

Reporting by Ju-min Park and Heekyong Yang Modifying by Kim Coghill

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