Tensions between the United States and China over semiconductors started with the trade war under the Trump administration and have risen under President Joe Biden’s leadership as Washington seeks to undermine Beijing’s efforts to develop its high-tech industry.

According to Reuters, the United States and the Netherlands are prepared to strike China’s chipmakers twice by further restricting supplies of chipmaking equipment, including some from Dutch company ASML, the world’s top player in the crucial lithography process.

A timeline of American measures against China’s chip sector is provided below:

After the American Justice Department charged the state-backed company with stealing trade secrets, the former president of the United States Donald Trump’s administration cut off the Chinese chipmaker Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit from its American suppliers in October 2018.

The first conflict in the lawsuit was between the Chinese company and Micron Technology. As a result of Trump’s action, there is now an international trade dispute between the US and China.

January 2020: According to Reuters, the Trump administration has been waging a significant campaign since 2018 to obstruct the export of Dutch chip manufacturing technology to China. It had the effect of preventing ASML from selling a Chinese customer its most sophisticated lithography machine.

May 2020: The Trump administration halts semiconductor shipments from international chipmakers to China’s Huawei Technologies, hurting its HiSilicon chip and smartphone operations.

The disagreement originally arose between the Chinese company and Micron Technology. Trump’s December 2020: The United States adds China’s largest chipmaker SMIC and numerous other Chinese companies to a trade blacklist and declares it will presumptively deny licenses to prevent SMIC from acquiring technology to create semiconductors at advanced technology levels of 10 nanometres or below.

Nvidia and Advanced Micron Devices, two American chip manufacturers, claim that U.S. officials have instructed them to halt shipping certain high-end computing processors to China for use in artificial intelligence projects in September 2022.

In October 2022, the Biden administration releases a comprehensive list of export restrictions, which includes a clause blocking China’s access to specific semiconductor chips produced anywhere in the world using American machinery.ove heightened it to the level of a global trade war between China and the United States.

January 2020: According to Reuters, the Trump administration launched a significant push to obstruct the transfer of Dutch chip manufacturing technology to China starting in 2018. As a result, ASML was unable to provide a Chinese client with its most sophisticated lithography machine.

May 2020: The HiSilicon chip and smartphone divisions of China’s Huawei Technologies are crippled by the Trump administration’s ban on semiconductor shipments from international chipmakers to Huawei Technologies.

December 2022: The U.S. adds YMTC, a Chinese manufacturer of memory chips, and numerous other Chinese companies to its trade sanctions list.

June 29, 2023: According to Reuters, the Netherlands is intending to restrict sales of specific ASML equipment to Chinese chipmakers this summer. The U.S. is anticipated to take things a step further and use its considerable influence to prevent certain Chinese manufacturing facilities from receiving any more Dutch equipment.

According to a different story quoting sources, U.S. authorities are considering strengthening an export control regulation aimed at reducing the amount of computational power that chips can have in order to reduce the flow of AI semiconductors to China.