Ignore the lobby!Biden's ban has escalated, and foreign media said that it has responded in advance
The U.S. has been restricting chewing gum for several years, and although it has restricted the export of certain chewing gum and high-end equipment, it has not stopped us from moving forward in the slightest.
Although the United States** knew that they had suffered losses due to restrictions imposed on China when communicating with American companies, they said that they would consider reducing their losses. However, the American side considered it worthwhile, and despite the collective lobbying of American companies, quickly signed a new ban!
The implementation of chip restrictions by the United States will indeed bring certain losses to Chinese companies, but in comparison, the losses of American companies are much greater. Taking Huawei as an example, the United States imposed a chip ban on Huawei, restricting American companies from shipping high-end chips.
Due to the sluggish sales of basic mobile phones, sales have declined sharply, affecting Huawei's revenue, and Huawei has no choice but to abandon the x86 server business. However, Huawei did not become depressed because of this, but turned the pressure into motivation and opened up more new businesses.
For example, Hongmeng has become the world's third largest mobile phone operating system, and some time ago there was news of the return of Kirin chips in the United States.
Especially since the beginning of this year, Huawei has been in constant news, such as the company's self-developed MetaERP, Gaussian database, Pangu large model, 14nm super EDA and so on. All of these improvements mean that Huawei's activity is starting to return strongly.
However, chip companies in the United States are getting worse, their performance has continued to decline, and many companies have begun to lay off employees to save themselves. At the same time that Intel's performance has declined for several consecutive quarters, Qualcomm's third-quarter net profit fell 52% year-on-year.
Although Nvidia did not cause a decline in profits due to AI chips, the restriction of shipments also had a big impact.
You know, Intel, Qualcomm, Nvidia and Huawei all have good cooperation, but the United States has limited their shipments, which has caused them huge losses. Several years have passed, and the restrictions in the United States have not only not been relaxed, but they intend to increase them again.
According to related news reports, some lawmakers in the United States have proposed to cancel the 4G operator licenses of Intel and Qualcomm and expand restrictions on Nvidia's special edition chips, which is simply worse for American companies. This is why the CEOs of the three major chip giants lobbied en masse.
They hope that Biden will not further expand the restrictions, lest they lose more and lose the competitiveness of the mainland market.
The U.S. Commerce Secretary acknowledged that the restrictions imposed on China had cost them, but he still believed the restrictions were worth it and said he would consider minimizing their losses. The implication is clear: restrictions will certainly continue, but the possibility of minimizing losses will be considered.
In other words, in the eyes of the United States**, the losses of the U.S. company occurred after the restriction and were negligible when the restriction was imposed.
Unsurprisingly, the situation was quickly verified. Shortly after the lobbying of the three chip giants, Biden signed a new ban some time ago prohibiting or restricting new U.S. investment in sensitive technology fields such as computer chips in China.
The new investment ban mainly targets three sectors, namely semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technology, and some artificial intelligence systems. After the ban is officially implemented, American companies will no longer be able to make significant investments in the Chinese mainland market.
There are many chip companies in the United States, most of which operate in the mainland market, and the revenue from the mainland market basically accounts for about 30%. They not only sell products directly, but also build factories or joint ventures in mainland China.
For example, Micron was unable to sell its products in China due to our investigation, so it decided to invest in an expansion of its factory in mainland China.
It is important to point out that the new investment ban will only affect future investments and will not affect existing ones. In other words, there will be no restrictions on investments already made in the mainland, which is perhaps the reason why Intel cooperated in the mainland some time ago.
Intel CEO Gelsinger made two discreet visits to China some time ago, and rumors of a new cooperation soon appeared. Intel decided to establish a joint venture in Shenzhen to establish a new tablet innovation center, and also signed relevant cooperation agreements with six Chinese companies in one go.
Perhaps knowing something in advance, Intel is eager to work with Chinese companies to avoid new restrictions on the project.
In this regard, some foreign media directly said that Intel took the lead and entered in a hurry before Biden announced the new ban, so new investment cooperation will not be restricted. On the other hand, U.S. companies also need to find ways to circumvent the U.S. ban on China.
Of course, the restrictions on tablets imposed on American companies also force American companies to look for opportunities to expand their cooperation with Chinese companies on their own in order to minimize losses. Therefore, following NVIDIA and Intel, AMD also planned to launch a special edition chip some time ago.
No wonder Zhang Zhongmou said some time ago that the mainland would find a way to break the situation, and now even American companies don't want the chip restriction to succeed!