U.S. plans crackdown on allied chip plants in China, WSJ reports

Jeffrey Kessler, head of the unit in charge of export controls at the Commerce Department, told three companies this week that he wants to revoke waivers that they have used to access American technology in China, The Wall Street Journal’s Liza Lin, Amrith Ramkumar, and Raffaele Huang report. According to people familiar with the matter said, Samsung (SSNLF), TSMC (TSM), and SK Hynix enjoy blanket waivers currently that allow them to ship American chip-making equipment to their factories in China without applying for a separate license each time. Kessler described the desire to revoke the waivers as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on critical U.S. technology going to China. Other publicly traded companies in the space include AMD (AMD), Intel (INTC), Marvell (MRVL), Microchip (MCHP), Micron (MU), Nvidia (NVDA), Qualcomm (QCOM) and Texas Instruments (TXN).