Just a few weeks after the U.S. and China made significant steps to de-escalate the growing trade war between the two countries, tensions are flaring again — this time over semiconductors.
China’s Commerce Ministry in Beijing released a statement on Wednesday that threatened legal action against anyone who enforces U.S. export restrictions on Huawei’s AI chips, according to reporting from Bloomberg.
This statement is in response to a set of “guidelines” released by the Trump administration on May 13 — alongside the revocation of Joe Biden’s Artificial Intelligence Diffusion rule — that reminded companies that using Huawei’s Ascend AI chips “anywhere in the world” was a violation of U.S. export rules.
Earlier this week, China said the Trump administration had undermined recent trade talks by issuing that guidance.
The U.S. Commerce Department has since changed the wording of its original May 13 guidance to remove the “anywhere in the world” phrase, according to Bloomberg.
