TSMC Doesn’t See Direct Impact On Manufacturing Due To China’s Metal Export Curbs: Report

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), which is one of the key iPhone makers for Apple and the biggest contract chipmaker in the world said on Thursday it does not foresee any direct impact on its manufacturing in the wake of the restrictions on exports of two metals widely used in semiconductors and electric vehicles by China, the media has reported. Earlier this week, China said it is going to curb the exports of products made from the minor metals of gallium and germanium, in a bid to protect national security. This announcement came after the Joe Biden administration said it is looking to limit China’s access to cloud services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft’s Azure, to protect advanced technology.

“After evaluation, we do not expect the export restrictions on raw materials gallium and germanium will have any direct impact on TSMC’s production,” TSMC was quoted as saying by news agency Reuters in an emailed statement.

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The chipmaking major added that it would continue to monitor the situation closely, without elaborating further.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, Washington decided to make it mandatory for cloud service providers to seek government permission before serving Chinese companies that employ such platforms to train artificial intelligence (AI) models, says a report by The Wall Street Journal. The Joe Biden-led administration is preparing to restrict Chinese companies’ access to US cloud-computing services, according to people familiar with the situation, in a move that could further strain relations between the world’s economic superpowers, the report added.

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To recall, in more than the past one and a half years, the Biden administration and the members of Congress have beefed up exploration of what can be done to address security concerns about the Cloud computing divisions of Chinese tech behemoths such as Huawei and Alibaba.

In the past few years, the US has restricted China’s access to crucial technologies while trying to limit the reach of Chinese tech and telecommunication companies abroad.

Earlier in January, the US stopped approving licenses for its companies to export most items to Chinese tech giant Huawei, news agency Reuters had reported, citing three people familiar with the matter. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning, China opposed the US abusing an overly broad notion of national security to suppress Chinese firms unreasonably, the report added. Back in 2020, chip-making major Qualcomm got permission to sell 4G smartphone chipsets to Huawei.