Just a few weeks after the United States and China took significant steps to ease their ongoing trade war, new tensions have emerged — this time centered around artificial intelligence chips and semiconductors.
On Wednesday, China’s Ministry of Commerce issued a statement warning that it may take legal action against anyone complying with U.S. export restrictions targeting Huawei’s AI chips.
This response comes after the Trump administration released new "guidelines" on May 13, following the repeal of the Biden administration’s “AI Diffusion” rule. These guidelines emphasized that the use of Huawei’s Ascend AI chips “anywhere in the world” would be considered a violation of U.S. export laws.
The Chinese government viewed this move as an act that undermined the progress made during recent trade negotiations between the two countries. It also claimed that the guidance escalated the already growing diplomatic tensions.
According to Bloomberg, the U.S. Department of Commerce has since removed the phrase “anywhere in the world” from the original May 13 document in response to the backlash.
This incident once again highlights the delicate and geopolitically significant nature of the technological rivalry between the U.S. and China — particularly in the semiconductor and AI sectors. Huawei, one of China’s leading tech companies, continues to be at the center of U.S. national security concerns. The United States has placed Huawei on its sanctions list in an effort to isolate it from the global tech market. In turn, China has strongly opposed these measures and has made it clear that it will respond firmly.
Thus, the current standoff reflects an increasingly complex conflict between the two countries — both in technological and legal terms — and raises growing commercial and legal risks for international tech companies.
