The export and equipment restrictions imposed by the United States on chip manufacturing technology have so far not stopped the country from moving forward. High tariffs of up to 25% were imposed last week to prevent the use of Chinese-made chips in domestically produced products. Bloomberg recently reported that the United States will urge the two largest manufacturers of chip manufacturing machines to stop maintenance in China.
In a meeting with representatives of the Netherlands and Japan, the Trump administration wanted ASML and Tokyo Electron to prevent employees from performing maintenance on machines used by customers in China. Without regular maintenance, the chips produced will not meet the standards for use. Previously, ASML simply stopped selling spare parts to companies in China after the expiration of its license to meet the demands of President Biden's administration.
The old machines produced by Tokyo Electron and ASML are needed to produce legacy chips needed by the automotive and electronic equipment industries. In the United States, 2/3 of the chips used by local companies for the use of these two industries are imported from China. SMIC and Huawei have managed to modify older machines to produce newer chips to bypass previous technology restrictions.
In addition to maintenance constraints, the United States is also believed to be tightening the types of NVIDIA chips that can be exported to China. NVIDIA offers a different version of the chip just for China with reduced processing power to comply with US guidelines.