On April 11, the China Semiconductor Industry Association issued an urgent notice regarding the identification rules for the “country of origin” of semiconductor products.
Today, I would like to share my personal views based on some interpretations available online.
This matter is quite simple. Semiconductor chips are subject to tariffs based on their country of origin standards, meaning that when imported, we do not consider whose technology or equipment is used, but rather the “wafer fabrication location”!
In other words, after the wafer foundry has produced the chips, the standard we recognize is based on the location of wafer fabrication for import.
Taking NVIDIA as an example, if we import chips from American semiconductor manufacturers like NVIDIA, according to the previous identification standards, these would be classified as American-made chips. As everyone knows, after the trade war began, American-made chips are subject to at least145% tariffs.
Now, according to Chinese standards, most of these chips are fabricated in Taiwan, primarily by TSMC. Based on the chip standards, these are not American chips! Therefore, they do not need to bear such high tariffs!
This also breaks the previous American rules for identifying chips based on technology sources! This is a countermeasure using China’s supply chain rules against the American technology source rules.
As a result, the trend of the entire supply chain moving to the United States has been disrupted. Furthermore, for other non-American chips, if they wish to retain the Chinese market, they must either fabricate in non-American locations or fabricate domestically in China.
This is indeed a significant counterattack in the semiconductor industry’s “choke point” issue.
Trump wanted to bring manufacturing back, but with such a large market in China, chips cannot enter if they are produced in the United States.
Moreover, if this standard is implemented, it will further strengthen the autonomy and controllability of China’s semiconductor industry chain and supply chain.
Of course, we must also recognize the shortcomings, such as in advanced processes like5nm and3nm chips, or chips with higher technical content, where we still cannot achieve complete autonomy and controllability, and there are still gaps.
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