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President Trump Is Protecting America’s Technological Edge Over China

President Donald Trump’s forceful use of export controls on high-end, dual-use semiconductors to contain the Chinese Communist Party’s  technological ambitions is one of the most important national security achievements of his first term. Export controls are a national security tool that restricts the technology that corporations can sell or transfer to American adversaries.

In a long-overdue answer to China’s predatory industrial policies and unfair trade practices, the first Trump administration pioneered the use of these tools to counter China’s efforts to dominate critical technologies and further devastate U.S. industry.

Less than 100 days into his second term, the president has already begun building on this legacy to continue protecting America’s national and economic security.

Strong Export Controls Make Communist China Squirm

Strong export controls on these advanced semiconductors make Communist China squirm—a clear sign that they are effective. China has resorted to desperate attempts to intimidate the United States from persisting in Trump’s export control policy.

In 2023, during then-Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s “good will tour to China,” Huawei released a smartphone featuring a homegrown Chinese microchip that seemingly subverted U.S. attempts to limit China’s chipmaking technology. This deliberately timed stunt was clearly intended to persuade the U.S. to abandon aggressive export controls. It didn’t work—semiconductor industry experts quickly deduced that China’s chipmaking abilities were still years behind the cutting edge, and that China’s ability to scale up production of high-end chips remained limited. The entire episode was a vindication of the Trump administration’s approach.

China’s tech industry similarly attempted to intimidate Trump as he took office for his second term. The Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek released its R1 AI on Trump’s second inauguration day, just before he announced a landmark $500 billion investment in U.S. AI infrastructure. DeepSeek published technical papers disclosing a small part of their development costs, leading to a false media narrative that DeepSeek had figured out how to match or surpass cutting-edge U.S. AI giants with just a fraction of their capital and technological requirements. The narrative devastated U.S. tech stocks and sparked a $1 trillion loss in the U.S. stock market.

The news cycle was perfectly designed to convey that the U.S. was falling behind in AI and couldn’t restrain China’s AI developments. Markets latched onto reports that DeepSeek created its AI model for a meager $6 million. That’s a fraction of the billions spent by U.S. companies on similar projects, without using cutting-edge chips.

The claims cast doubt on the effectiveness of U.S. export controls, the viability of leading U.S. AI firms, and the wisdom of Trump’s support for a multihundred-billion-dollar U.S.-led AI infrastructure buildout. But like the Huawei phone, the media narrative around DeepSeek quickly unraveled.

The DeepSeek Narrative Unravels

It turned out that DeepSeek’s AI models relied on “large volumes of advanced AI chips with performance near the global state of the art” made by Nvidia. Also, DeepSeek’s newest models may be trained on smuggled chips banned by U.S. export controls. Industry experts found that claims about DeepSeek’s training costs conveniently omitted the largest expenses involved in AI development, including the price of high-end chips and power consumption.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei concluded that DeepSeek’s “total spend … is not vastly different from U.S. AI labs,” and that the cost reductions DeepSeek did demonstrate were “on-trend at best.”

The Need for More Export Control and Enforcement

If anything, DeepSeek’s high-end AI models highlight the need for more aggressive export control development and enforcement for advanced semiconductors. AI expert Gregory C. Allen has laid out how DeepSeek’s AI models were created using Nvidia chips designed solely to dodge export controls, which were subsequently banned from export to China in 2023.

Meanwhile, Chinese AI labs are increasingly turning to black markets for restricted chips and undertaking a national effort to indigenize supply chains necessary for AI development. DeepSeek CEO Liang Wenfeng himself noted in July 2024 that “[m]oney has never been the problem for us; bans on shipments of advanced chips are the problem.”

Further strengthening controls on high-end semiconductors and cracking down on smuggling operations can ensure that the U.S. advantage in AI persists. The CEO of ASML, a firm that makes critical semiconductor manufacturing equipment, has stated that U.S. export controls have left China approximately 10-15 years behind the West in producing the high-end chips necessary to escape the grasp of U.S. export controls.

Trump Is Protecting America’s Edge

Fortunately, Trump is picking up where he left off and continuing his legacy of protecting America’s technological edge.

Early in Trump’s first term, over 300 Chinese companies were added to the Bureau of Industry and Security’s Entity List. This subjected them to export controls and licensing requirements. The policy was so clearly in the national interest that the Biden administration continued it, restricting China’s access to the entire semiconductor sector in 2022 and 2023. This included key restrictions in December 2024 on high bandwidth memory, which is vital for AI applications. Trump looks set for an even more aggressive approach in his second term.

His day-one “America First” trade policy requires Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to “enhance our Nation’s technological edge” by eliminating “loopholes in existing export controls.” The president’s more recent America First Investment Policy explicitly indicates that the U.S. will crack down further on China’s attempts to indigenize semiconductor manufacturing.

Trump has also chosen personnel eager to implement this agenda. Lutnick has committed to rigorously enforcing tech restrictions. Before he was even confirmed, the Commerce Department adopted a more skeptical posture towards sales of restricted technology to China, a welcome change.

Most recently, on March 31, Lutnick and newly-confirmed Undersecretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Jeffrey Kessler sanctioned a slew of companies for “engaging in the development of advanced AI, supercomputers, and high-performance AI chips for China-based end-users with close ties to the country’s military-industrial complex.”

“We are committed to using every tool at the Department’s disposal to ensure our most advanced technologies stay out of the hands of those who seek to harm Americans,” Lutnick explained at the time. And this is only the beginning—the president has now awaiting Senate confirmation who are firmly committed to further bolstering export controls on high end semiconductors.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party should be concerned. These are exactly the moves a leader would make if he intends to prevent China from dominating critical technologies. Trump’s approach to semiconductor export controls is the right one. These policies have protected America’s national security and technological edge and are even more critical today than during his first term.

Thankfully, the president is planning to take them even further.

Europe’s Digital Leaders Call for “Tech Sovereignty”

Since the Nordic, Baltic, and other small European countries banded together in 2016 to create the D9 group, they promoted themselves as pro-tech advocates of an open digital economy. Now, in reaction to Washington’s imposition of punitive tariffs, they are changing gears.

The European Union needs a strategy that increases “tech sovereignty,” the group’s communique from its latest summit in Amsterdam states. To do so, Europe “needs to strengthen its technological capabilities as well as its trade relations.”

The declaration marks a stark contrast with previous positions. Before Amsterdam, the D9+ advocated a pause on new digital regulations and a review of the impact of digital regulation on innovation and competitiveness. New US tariffs on European cars, steel, aluminum, and other products have provoked a dramatic rethink. In retaliation, the EU is weighing measures to hit US digital exports, including those from Silicon Valley companies. “Europe holds many cards,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen recently told the European Parliament. “From trade to technology to the size of our market. But this strength is also built on our readiness to take firm countermeasures. All instruments are on the table.”

What specific weapons Europe might use remains unclear. The European Commission is expected to announce new penalties against Meta and Apple for its Digital Markets Act violations in the coming days. Additional potential measures include limiting US companies’ ability to bid on public contracts to a new Anti-Coercion Instrument allowing sweeping moves such as banning US social media platforms, potentially starting with Elon Musk’s X.

The continent is divided on how far to go, waiting to absorb the breadth of US tariffs. France wants strict measures. Italy, under right-wing leader Giorgia Meloni, is cautious. The small D9+ countries – from Finland in the north to Portugal in the South – previously could be counted on to fight for few European-only restrictions. 

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The latest D9+ communique on “tech sovereignty” could still be read differently. It calls for reducing regulation and promoting Europe’s digital economy, arguing that the EU should boost the development of European artificial intelligence, cloud, and connectivity. But it describes “tech sovereignty in an open manner,”  meaning “the ability to act autonomously on the world stage and in line with our values while reaping the benefits of collaboration with global partners when possible.” In other words, promote European digital businesses while working with US partners.

At the same time, the communique also emphasizes that “the EU needs to strengthen its technological capabilities as well as its trade relations, with the goal to mitigate strategic dependencies.”  Pressure has been building for the EU to reduce its reliance on the US and build a European technology infrastructure in light of worsening EU-US relations. In March, some 100 European companies, including defense heavyweights Airbus and Dassault, sent a letter to von der Leyen calling for the EU to become “more technologically independent across all layers of its critical digital infrastructure.”

Europe’s next steps require bold investments in research and technology, even as new Washington tariffs threaten to escalate tensions. Tech sovereignty means building up local capabilities so that Europe can negotiate from a position of strength. The communique’s mention of “an open manner” underscores that the EU should seek better terms, not break global ties.

As D9+ governments turn to digital sovereignty, European businesses are turning to digital competitiveness. During the uDutch government’s summit for D9+ digital ministers, the so-called S9+ (S for Startups) hosted an event on ‘Accelerating Europe’s competitiveness.’ It issued a declaration pushing  back against “excessive regulation on digital businesses” and stating that “Europe’s excessive and fragmented regulation has become a self-imposed barrier, making scaling for start-ups increasingly difficult.”

The S9+ Declaration highlights five key areas: “AI Competitiveness,” “Balanced Data Regulation,” “Unlocking Growth Capital,” “Preserving data-driven marketing and advertising,” and “Enabling Digital Infrastructure.”  Europe controls the ability to take these actions independently. An unanswered question is whether it will manage to find ways to work with Washington or will be forced to go it alone.

William Echikson is a Non-resident Senior Fellow with the Tech Policy Program and editor of the online tech policy journal Bandwidth at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).

Bandwidth is CEPA’s online journal dedicated to advancing transatlantic cooperation on tech policy. All opinions expressed on Bandwidth are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.

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