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The US has raised with European allies the idea of drawing upon lessons from the export control regime they’re using to punish Russia to target China, according to people familiar with the matter.
The conversations came up as European Union and US officials are negotiating the agenda for their next high-level trade forum in early December. The allies have cooperated on restricting exports to Moscow since President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, and the Biden administration is exploring using some of the same information sharing and enforcement coordination to reinforce its own bilateral restrictions on exports to China, said the people, who asked for anonymity to address sensitive topics.
So far, the people added, the EU isn’t inclined to consider following the same approach to China as with Russia because the circumstances are different, but one of the people said there may be room to look at goods that could be used by Beijing to bolster its military capability. It’s unclear whether the topic will come up when US Trade Representative Katherine Tai meets EU trade ministers who are in Prague for an informal meeting on Monday.
“The U.S. is not considering extending the Russia export controls to China nor have we raised doing so with the Europeans,” Saloni Sharma, a spokeswoman for the US National Security Council, said in response to questions.
Export controls have been one of the more effective tools to cripple Russia’s arsenal and are seen as potentially useful to slow down China in the global tech race. Earlier this month, the Biden administration restricted US companies from selling some chips used for supercomputing and artificial intelligence to Chinese firms.
Senior EU and US officials are set to meet Dec. 5 near Washington to agree on a list of economic plans in the third meeting of the Trade and Technology Council.
