TSMC, Samsung seeking permanent US licenses to operate China chip plants

The US Commerce Department announced today that key foreign chipmakers can continue receiving critical US chipmaking tools at China-based plants, Reuters reported. This decision extends special authorizations that were granted to foreign chipmakers—including South Korea’s SK Hynix and Samsung, as well as the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC)—after the Biden administration curbed shipments of advanced chips and chipmaking equipment to China last October. Those export controls were intended to slow down China’s rapid advancement of AI and military technologies, but the new rules also ended up negatively impacting US chip production. To overcome those inadvertent impacts on US chip supplies,…