By Karen Freifeld
March 13 (Reuters) – The U.S. Commerce Department withdrew a planned rule on artificial-intelligence chip exports on Friday, the latest backpedaling by the Trump administration in its efforts to promote secure American AI dominance.
The department had sent a draft rule, to replace a January 2025 Biden-era regulation on global access to AI chips, to other agencies for feedback late last month.
A notification for the “AI Action Plan Implementation” rule was posted on the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs website on February 26, saying the rule was pending review, before it was pulled on Friday.
“This supposed rule was always a draft and remains a draft,” a U.S. official said in a statement when asked about the withdrawal. “All discussions that were previously reported were preliminary.”
Last spring, the Commerce Department said it was going to revoke and replace the Biden-era rule with a much simpler one that ensured American AI dominance, but no new regulation appeared.
The latest Trump draft considered requiring investments by foreign countries in U.S. data centers or security guarantees as a condition for granting exports of 200,000 chips or more, according to a document seen by Reuters last week.
Foreign firms that wanted up to 100,000 chips would need to provide government-to-government assurances, the document said.
The plan departed markedly from the Biden approach, which divided the world into three tiers: allies that could receive unlimited chips; much of the world, which was subject to limited numbers; and countries of concern that were blocked from receiving the coveted chips. The Biden rule capped a four-year effort by that administration to hobble China’s access to advanced chips while maintaining U.S. leadership in AI.
A former official said on Friday that the withdrawal of the latest planned rule likely reflects differing views within the Trump administration on how to achieve global AI supremacy and address national security concerns.
The Commerce Department posted on March 5 on X that it was “committed to promoting secure exports of the American tech stack.” It said there were internal government discussions about formalizing the approach it took with deals to send U.S. chips to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, where both countries agreed to invest in the U.S.
But it said the department would not return to the Biden AI diffusion rule, which it described as burdensome.
(Reporting by Karen Freifeld; Editing by Chris Reese, Alistair Bell and William Mallard)
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