Asia

The U.S. must ratchet up efforts to compete with China or “they’re going to eat our lunch,” President Biden told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, offering his first comments on his lengthy discussion with Chinese President Xi Jinping the night before.

With surging global demand for semiconductors and a waning supply -- both exacerbated by the pandemic -- and with China redoubling its efforts to advance and increase its chip manufacturing, the U.S. must act quickly to provide domestic incentives for semiconductor manufacturing, according to the CEO of a leading technology trade association.

Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant that has found itself subject to a litany of U.S. restrictions, is hoping the Biden administration will allow it to buy some inputs from U.S. companies but not expecting to be removed from the Commerce Department’s Entity List, company founder Ren Zhengfei told reporters in China on Tuesday.

More than 3,500 lawsuits have been filed at the Court of International Trade.

34 business groups ask the acting Commerce secretary to suspend the interim final rule issued last month.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology last week announced it would create a semiconductor standards committee composed of 90 Chinese companies, including Huawei, ZTE, SMIC and others, that analysts suggest is an attempt by Beijing to advance its goal of technological self-reliance. 

“I’ll lift the hold when the Biden admin commits to keep the massive Chinese Communist Party spy operation Huawei on the Entity List,” he tweeted.

Raimondo also touched on export controls, steel overcapacity and the U.S.-EU Privacy Shield.