US Drops AI Chip Export Permit Proposal
The US Commerce Department has withdrawn a draft regulation that aimed to limit the export of artificial intelligence chips globally without US authorization, as indicated by an electronic notification on a government website. The Office of Management and Budget’s website was updated on Friday to indicate that the interagency review process for the rule had concluded and that the measure had been withdrawn, though no additional details were provided. A Trump administration official stated late Friday that the rule, which has now been withdrawn, was merely a draft and that any discussions surrounding the proposal were in the preliminary stages. Earlier Friday, it is reported on the withdrawal.
The draft rule was earlier covered, noting that it may undergo significant changes or be completely abandoned. The Trump administration took its most significant action toward a global chip export strategy by abandoning the regulatory framework it had received from the Biden administration last year. In reaction to the report, the Commerce Department stated last week that “we will not” revert to the previous administration’s AI diffusion framework, which it described as “burdensome, overreaching and disastrous.”
The proposal from the now-abandoned Trump administration aimed to assign a substantial role to the Commerce Department’s licensing office, which would have been responsible for conducting case-by-case reviews of AI chip exports from Nvidia Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. According to a source, approvals would have depended on various factors, such as government-to-government agreements and the amount of computing power requested by each end user.
