The sun sets behind the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Friday (local time). [Getty Images]
The sun sets behind the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Friday (local time). [Getty Images]

John Moolenaar, the Republican chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, has urged the Donald Trump administration to enforce a rule requiring semiconductor manufacturers, including foundries, to closely scrutinize whether orders for advanced chip production come from companies fronting for sanctioned Chinese entities.

The Joe Biden administration announced the rule in January last year, requiring chipmakers to investigate whether customers placing advanced semiconductor production orders were shell companies concealing ties to unreliable Chinese firms. The measure came in response to revelations that TSMC had supplied chips to Chinese chip designer Sophgo, which then passed them on to Huawei — a company under US sanctions.

Uncertainty over whether the rule would be enforced grew after the Trump administration announced it had no plans to implement a separate semiconductor export control measure introduced under Biden.

In a letter to Jeffrey Kessler, the Commerce Department's undersecretary for industry and security, Moolenaar urged enforcement of the rule, calling it "a critical measure to prevent China from accessing advanced American chips." He wrote that the rule was designed to "close the loophole exploited by China's Huawei and Sophgo."

Moolenaar warned that if foundries such as TSMC concluded that the chips they manufacture fell outside the rule's scope, "the risk of a Sophgo-style export control failure recurring would increase enormously."

The letter signals growing concern within the Republican Party over the Trump administration's more permissive approach to the flow of advanced semiconductors into China, Reuters reported.

Earlier, in June, Sen. Jim Banks and a group of fellow Republican lawmakers sent a separate letter to the Trump administration urging it to tighten related rules to prevent foundries from producing advanced AI chips for overseas subsidiaries of Chinese companies.


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