Amid China tech advances, US national security is ‘foremost’: top Biden official
- American vulnerability to Chinese overcapacity also a concern being tackled, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo tells key House Appropriations committee
- Testimony follows recent US decision to prohibit tech titans Qualcomm and Intel from supplying less advanced chips to China’s Huawei
Speaking before the House Appropriations committee, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo also highlighted ongoing efforts to identify areas where the US was most vulnerable to Chinese overcapacity.
The US Commerce Department has not publicly announced the decision, and it did not respond to a request for comment.
When asked on Wednesday to comment on the matter, Raimondo called Huawei a risk while refraining from offering direct remarks about either Qualcomm or Intel.
The decision arose after Huawei last month unveiled its first AI-enabled laptop, the MateBook X Pro, which runs on Intel’s newest processor, the Core Ultra 9.
In recent years, the US government has placed several Chinese companies, including Huawei, on multiple blacklists.
The president has vowed to implement measures to shield American manufacturers from Chinese state subsidies and the product gluts resulting from them.
“Because Chinese steel companies produce a lot more steel than China needs, [Beijing] ends up dumping the extra steel into the global markets at unfairly low prices,” Biden said last month at a campaign event. “They are cheating.”
The Commerce Department was working closely with the Office of the United States Trade Representative to “identify where are we most vulnerable and what actions could we take”, she added.
The search was on, she added, for “any evidence of China dropping the price, which would distort the market and make it impossible for US chip companies to compete”.