U.S. export approvals stall
Approvals for AI‑chip exports to China have slowed because the Bureau of Industry and Security has lost nearly a fifth of its licensing staff, creating a licensing bottleneck for vendors. (tomshardware.com) The delay shows export controls depend on administration capacity as much as policy design, with some cleared products still unsold months after permission was granted. (tomshardware.com)
U.S. approvals for Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices to ship advanced artificial intelligence chips to China are taking months as the Commerce Department’s export-control office runs short of staff. (bloomberg.com) Bloomberg reported on April 10 that the Bureau of Industry and Security has lost dozens of experienced employees in the past year, leaving nearly 20% turnover in its rulemaking and licensing teams. The same report said tighter signoff by senior officials has slowed individual export decisions. (bloomberg.com) The holdup comes after the Bureau of Industry and Security changed policy on January 13, 2026, saying it would review license applications for Nvidia H200, Advanced Micro Devices MI325X, and similar chips for China on a case-by-case basis instead of treating them as presumptively blocked. The agency said applicants must show the sale would not reduce supply for United States customers and must meet testing and compliance conditions. (bis.gov) Those approvals still have not translated into much trade. A Commerce Department export-enforcement official told lawmakers on February 24 that Nvidia had sold zero H200 chips to China two months after President Donald Trump allowed the shipments, and Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang said on March 17 that the company had purchase orders and was restarting manufacturing. (bloomberg.com) (cnbc.com) The Bureau of Industry and Security does more than police chip sales to China. Reuters reported on August 1, 2025, that thousands of export-license applications for goods and technology worldwide were stuck in limbo, and one United States official said the backlog was the longest in more than three decades. (usnews.com) Commerce defended the slower pace at the time. A department spokesperson told Reuters the bureau “will no longer rubber-stamp” applications that raise national-security concerns, while former National Security Council official Meghan Harris said delayed and unpredictable licensing puts United States companies at a disadvantage. (usnews.com) The fight sits inside a longer campaign over semiconductors, the computing components that run data centers, weapons systems, and artificial intelligence software. A Congressional Research Service report published in September 2025 said Washington has tightened controls on advanced chips since 2018 to limit China’s access to the technology and to slow military and industrial gains tied to artificial intelligence. (congress.gov) That leaves the current policy in an awkward place: Washington has reopened a narrow path for some high-end chip sales to China, but the office that must approve each shipment is moving too slowly to clear the line. Until staffing and review capacity improve, export policy will keep being set not just by rules on paper, but by how many people are left to process them. (bis.gov) (bloomberg.com)
