From Donald Trump to Joe Biden, and despite their political differences, one consistency has remained in the Oval Office of the White House in recent years: a desire to prevent China from surpassing the United States in technology.
With this in mind, to which Washington links security considerations, Joe Biden signed, on Wednesday August 9, a new decree restricting collaboration between American and Chinese companies in the fields, which have become strategic, of artificial intelligence, semiconductors more sophisticated and quantum computing. If the text as a whole is aimed at “problematic countries” for the United States, it is obviously China that is the first target.
“The Biden administration is committed to defending American national security by protecting critical technologies from the next generation of military innovations”, the Treasury Department said in a statement. But, as a consequence, it is on a wider use of technologies and innovations that the sanctions relate.
With the backing of grants
This announcement came as Joe Biden, campaigning for re-election in 2024, was traveling to New Mexico to tout his industrial policy and defend his two investment plans, including the “Chips and Science Act”, a year after its adoption on August 9, 2022. This semiconductor law clearly targets Chinese positions in this market and intends to bring on American soil the manufacture of semiconductors with a lot of subsidies. Behind its dependence on the semiconductor industry, it is whole sections of its industry that the United States sees threatened, from computers to telephones, from automobiles to the latest generation factories, stuffed with chips.
Already in 2019, sanctions against Huawei had banned the Chinese company from accessing Google’s software suites. Briefly becoming world number one in the smartphone sector, the Shenzhen giant has now disappeared from all the charts, for lack of access to the latest innovations, after new sanctions.
By emphasizing this policy, the American president is pursuing several objectives, internally and on the international scene. His message to the working electorate, seduced by his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump is clear. “Where does it say America can’t be number one again in manufacturing?” Because that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”, promised Mr. Biden from New Mexico. On the geopolitical level, it is also a question of reaffirming the American will to contain Chinese influence.
You have 51.41% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.