The Commerce Department sent a letter to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company ordering it to stop shipments of advanced semiconductors to certain Chinese customers, including 7 nanometer chips or others of “more advanced designs,” Reuters reported Nov. 9. The letter specifically orders TSMC to stop shipments, beginning Nov. 11, destined for Chinese customers of chips that power artificial intelligence accelerator and graphics processing units, the report said.
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. You can find any article by searching for the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
European nations are seeing a sharp uptick in export control and sanctions enforcement this year, raising risks for companies doing business in the EU, said Mark Handley, a lawyer with Duane Morris.
The U.K.’s Export Control Joint Unit last week published a list of export-controlled goods, software and technology for which the exporter still must use SPIRE, the country’s outgoing licensing system, to apply for a license. The country plans to retire SPIRE, or the Shared Primary Information Resource Environment, and replace it with its new digital export licensing system, Licensing for International Trade (LITE), in the coming months (see 2409190037), but applications for certain sensitive items still must go through SPIRE (see 2409250022). The list, included in a new table of "control list entries," includes certain genetically modified organisms, items related to capital punishment and torture, certain radioactive items, and more.
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York this month denied a request from Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co. to help the company obtain access to certain discovery documents that are restricted by the Bureau of Industry and Security. Judge Cheryl Pollak said that while DOJ marked hundreds of thousands of documents at a lower level of classification than BIS, which would give Huawei greater access to the records, the documents are "still subject to further review by BIS" (United States v. Huawei Technologies, E.D.N.Y. # 18-00457).
A U.S. financial software company said it received a warning letter this month from the Office of Foreign Assets Control after disclosing possible sanctions violations.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control reminded users of its website to fill out a survey (see 2410110053) that will give OFAC feedback on how it can streamline the site’s navigation and improve its “sanctions guidance, resource accessibility, and user experience.” The survey closes Dec. 30.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is expected to begin suspending production of AI chips at advanced process nodes of 7 nanometers for its Chinese customers beginning Nov. 11, the Financial Times reported last week.
The Bureau of Industry and Security and its technical advisory committees should do more public outreach to make sure companies are aware of important export control updates sometimes buried in Federal Register notices, a BIS committee heard last week. That outreach is especially critical for companies working with industrial chemical processing equipment, a committee member and industry lawyer said, which has commercial uses but is increasingly drawing BIS scrutiny for its military capabilities, including in chemical weapons.
The leaders of the House Select Committee on China asked five large semiconductor manufacturing equipment (SME) firms Nov. 7 to provide data about their China sales, saying the information would help lawmakers better understand the “flow of SME” to the Asian country and its contribution to China’s “rapid buildout of its semiconductor manufacturing industrial base.”