Tag: Micron Technology Inc

U.S. Commerce Secretary Faces a Wide Range of Issues in China

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Gina Raimondo, the secretary of commerce, who arrived in Beijing on Sunday, is the latest Biden administration emissary seeking to stabilize ties between the world’s two largest economies. The fourth senior U.S. official to travel to China in less than three months, Ms. Raimondo is taking her trip at a critical juncture. Relations between the countries are strained, partly because the United States has clamped down on China’s access to technology that could aid its military. China’s economy also appears to be slowing, and Beijing has been trying to woo…

Chips Make It Tough for the U.S. to Quit China

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In May, Micron Technologies, the Idaho chipmaker, suffered a serious blow as part of the U.S.-China technology war. The Chinese government barred companies that handle crucial information from buying Micron’s chips, saying the company had failed a cybersecurity review. Micron said the change could destroy roughly an eighth of its global revenue. Yet in June, the chipmaker announced that it would increase its investments in China — adding $600 million to expand a chip packaging facility in the Chinese city of Xian. “This investment project demonstrates Micron’s unwavering commitment to…

White House Reportedly Weighs New A.I. Export Limits

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Will the U.S. tighten a cordon around A.I. chips? Shares in high-flying chipmakers like Nvidia and AMD were down in premarket trading today, after The Wall Street Journal reported that the Biden administration is weighing new restrictions on exporting artificial intelligence-related semiconductors to China. The deliberations underscore the White House’s worries about falling behind in the race to dominate A.I. and the potential for Beijing to use the technology in military applications — and they show that it is willing to tighten the screws on trade to stay ahead. Any…

China Wants to Set the Terms of Any ‘Thaw’ With the U.S.

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For a few weeks, a flurry of meetings between American and Chinese officials seemed to signal that the two countries were trying to reduce tensions, after months of rancor and frozen high-level contacts raised concerns about the risk of a conflict, accidental or otherwise. First the U.S. national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, met with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, in Vienna, in May. Then the two countries’ top commerce officials held talks, the first bilateral cabinet-level meeting in Washington in months. China’s ambassador also arrived in Washington last week, finally…

China Escalates U.S. Tech War With Micron Ban

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When cutting foreign technology companies from Chinese supply chains, Beijing has long chosen to work obliquely or even secretly. Regulators would give executives back-room lectures, weigh them down with excessive red tape or hit them with occasional office raids. Rarely did the government tell a firm outright it was no longer welcome. But that is what it signaled to Micron Technology in a late-night announcement on Sunday. The Chinese government banned companies that handle critical information from purchasing microchips made by the Boise, Idaho-based Micron. The company’s chips, which are…

China Bans Some Chip Sales of Micron, the US Company

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Beijing on Sunday told Chinese companies that deal with critical information to stop purchasing products from Micron Technology, the U.S.-based manufacturer of memory chips used in phones, computers and other electronics. Many analysts viewed the move as retaliation for Washington’s efforts to cut off China’s access to high-end chips. In a statement on its official social media site, the Cyberspace Administration of China said that in a cybersecurity review it had found that the chip maker’s products posed “relatively serious cybersecurity problems.” The problems could “seriously endanger the supply chain…

Even as China Reopens, Security Visits Spook Foreign Businesses

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With China’s pandemic restrictions dismantled and its leaders wooing executives flying into the country again, this was supposed to be a springtime of renewed investor confidence in the world’s second-biggest economy. But a drumbeat of government security measures, including a broadening of counterespionage laws, and unannounced visits by investigators to the Chinese offices of several foreign firms have sent a shiver of worry that under Xi Jinping, economic pragmatism could again give way to a heightened focus on state control. International consulting and advisory firms are among those that have…

What is in the CHIPS Act, Aimed at Childcare Expansion and National Security

Chin@Strategy

The Biden administration unveiled new rules Tuesday for its “Chips for America” program to build up semiconductor research and manufacturing in the United States, beginning a new rush toward federal funding in the sector. The Commerce Department has $50 billion to hand out in the form of direct funding, federal loans and loan guarantees. It represents one of the largest federal investments in a single industry in decades and highlights deepening concern in Washington about America’s dependence on foreign chips. Given the huge cost of building highly advanced semiconductor facilities,…

U.S. Pours Money Into Chips, but Even Soaring Spending Has Limits

Chin@Strategy

In September, the chip giant Intel gathered officials at a patch of land near Columbus, Ohio, where it pledged to invest at least $20 billion in two new factories to make semiconductors. A month later, Micron Technology celebrated a new manufacturing site near Syracuse, N.Y., where the chip company expected to spend $20 billion by the end of the decade and eventually perhaps five times that. And in December, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company hosted a shindig in Phoenix, where it plans to triple its investment to $40 billion and build…

Chip Makers, Once in High Demand, Confront Sudden Challenges

Chin@Strategy

A few months ago, makers of computer chips seemed on top of the world. Customers could not get enough of the small slices of silicon, which act as the brains of computers and are needed in just about every device with an on-off switch. Demand was so strong — and U.S. dependence on a foreign manufacturer so worrying — that Democrats and Republicans agreed in July on a $52 billion subsidy package that included grants to build new chip factories in America. U.S. chip makers such as Intel, Micron Technology,…