There won’t be a DUV export ban to China (for now)

Say you’re the most powerful country in the world and you want to keep it that way. First and foremost, that means that you need to maintain your technological advantage. You can either: a) funnel billions into semiconductor R&D, design and manufacturing to extend your lead, or b) cut off your main rival from essential manufacturing equipment, which happens to be supplied by a foreign company.

At first, it looked like the US would be doing a little of both. The House of Representatives and the Senate last year passed bills that cleared the way for supporting the domestic semiconductor industry with federal tax dollars. Meanwhile, the US denied one of China’s biggest tech firms access to advanced semiconductor technology and prevented all of China’s semiconductor manufacturers from using the world’s most advanced lithography equipment.